LECTURES  ON  PEDAGOGY 

THEORETICAL  AND  PRACTICAL, 


GABRIEL  COMPAYRE, 

AUTHOB  OF  "HlSTOIRE  DE  LA  PEDAGOGIE,"   PROFESSOR  IN  THE  NORMAL 

SCHOOLS  OF  FONTENAY-AUX-ROSES  AND  SAINT  CLOUD,  AND 

MEMBER  OF  THE  CHAMBER  OF  DEPUTIES. 


TRANSLATED,    WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION,   NOTES, 
AND  AN  APPENDIX, 


W.   H.   PAYNE,   A.M., 

CHANCELLOR  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  NASHVILLE  AND  PRESIDENT  OF  THE 

PEABODY   NORMAL   COLLEGE  ;  AUTHOR  OF  "  CHAPTERS  ON  SCHOOL 

SUPERVISION,"  "  OUTLINES  OF  EDUCATIONAL  DOCTRINE,"  AND 

" CONTRTBUTIONS   TO   THE   SCIENCE   OF  EDUCATION" 

EDITOR  OF  "PAGE'S    THEORY    AND   PRACTICE 

OF  TEACHING  "  ;  AND  TRANSLATOR  OF 

COMPAYRE'S  "HISTOIRE  DE 

LA  PEDAGOGIE." 


BOSTON:^        >•  A. 
D.  C.  HEATH  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS. 

1889. 


U.  C.  L  A. 
EOUC.  DEPT. 


COPYRIGHT,  1887, 
Br  W.  H.  PAYNE. 


PRESSWORK  BY  BERWICK  &  SMITH,  BOSTON,  MASS. 


U.  C.  L.  A. 
EDUC.  DEPT. 


-7  p.  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  r  »•  T  TFORNIA 
£.~f  SANTA  BARBARA 

TRANSLATOR'S    PREFACE. 


IN  recent  years  the  literature  of  education  has  been  enriched  by 
no  contributions  superior  to  Compayre's  "  Histoire  de  la  Pedagogic  " 
and  "  Cours  de  Pedagogic,  Theorique  et  Pratique."  The  qualities 
that  are  so  conspicuous  in  the  first,  —  wise  selection  of  material, 
absolute  clearness  of  statement,  judicial  fairness  in  the  treatment 
of  open  questions,  critical  insight,  width  of  intellectual  perspective, 
elegance  of  diction, —  also  characterize  the  second ;  and  these  two 
volumes  may  be  accepted  as  the  best  resume  yet  made  of  the  his- 
tory, the  theory,  and  the  practice  of  education. 

M.  Compayre  is  too  wise,  too  catholic,  and  too  honest  to  be  an 
extremist,  and  his  familiarity  with  the  history  of  education  has 
preserved  his  respect  for  the  thinkers  and  teachers  of  the  past,  and 
has  saved  him  from  the  illusion  that  a  revolution  in  doctrines  and 
methods  is  imminent.  As  the  reader  proceeds  from  chapter  to 
chapter  he  is  affected  by  the  words  of  a  judge  whose  sole  preoccu- 
pation is  the  truth,  and  not  of  an  attorney  who  is  addressing  a  jury- 
box.  In  the  wide  and  wise  economy  of  things,  partisans  and  ex- 
tremists doubtless  have  their  uses  ;  but  the  habit  of  mind  that  is 
most  worthy  of  cultivation  is  temperance,  candor,  and  judicial  fair- 
ness in  dealing  with  a  question  so  complex  and  difficult  as  that  of 
education.  This  is  the  prevailing  spirit  of  every  volume  which 
has  proceeded  from  the  pen  of  M.  Compayre'. 

These  lectures  will  commend  themselves  to  that  class  of  teachers, 
now  happily  growing  in  numbers,  who  are  looking  to  psychology 
as  the  rational  basis  of  their  art.  They  will  discover,  perchance 
to  their  surprise  and  delight,  that  psychology  is  not  an  occult  sci- 
ence, but  that  the  main  laws  and  essential  facts  of  the  intellectual 
life  can  be  expressed  in  intelligible  terms.  This  subject,  like  every 

ill 


IV  PREFACE. 

other  upon  which  man  makes  a  trial  of  his  thought,  finally  shades 
off  into  transcendental  vagueness  and  uncertainty;  but  happily 
the  portions  that  have  a  real  value  for  guidance  lie  quite  within 
the  compass  of  the  common  understanding.  For  the  purposes  of 
disinterested  science  the  mind  may  be  analyzed  as  though  it  were 
an  inert  thing,  just  as  a  dead  body  may  be  dissected,  and  most 
psychologies  seem  to  have  been  written  from  this  point  of  view ; 
but  for  the  teacher's  use  the  mind  should  be  studied  in  its  cardinal 
movements  when  engaged  in  the  process  of  learning.  Such  in  the 
main  is  M.  Compayre's  treatment  of  the  subject  in  Part  First  of 
these  Lectures. 

The  thoughtful  reader  can  hardly  fail  to  experience  the  charm 
of  the  author's  ardent  patriotism.  In  this  volume  the  teacher  is 
considered  as  enlisted  in  the  service  of  the  state,  working  for  her 
preservation,  her  prosperity,  her  glory ;  and  the  common  school  is 
a  mould  out  of  which  shall  issue  the  highest  type  of  republican 
citizenship.  The  teacher  who  surveys  his  work  from  this  vantage- 
ground  must  be  made  of  poor  stuff  if  he  does  not  feel  a  conscious 
pride  in  his  calling,  and  does  not  attain  a  higher  success  by  keep- 
ing steadily  and  clearly  in  view  this  goal  of  his  efforts. 

In  America,  as  in  France,  the  state  by  deliberate  intent  as  well 
as  by  a  necessary  evolution  has  become  an  educator.  The  public 
school  is  a  civil  institution,  but  on  this  account  it  is  neither  god- 
less, unchristian,  nor  immoral.  Between  the  church  and  the  state 
there  has  come  about  a  division  of  functions,  and  there  is  no  good 
reason  why  they  may  not  cooperate  as  honorable  and  helpful  allies. 
This  thought  has  never  been  more  tersely  and  beautifully  expressed 
than  in  these  words  by  our  author : 

"  We  shall  continue  to  build  on  our  solid  bases  of  justice,  charity,  and 
tolerance  the  human  city,  while  leaving  to  the  ministers  of  religion 
the  task  of  building  beside  it  what  Saint  Augustine  called  the  city  of 
God." 

The  teacher's  happiness  and  professional  improvement  both  re- 
quire that  he  should  have  an  educational  creed  as  an  intellectual 
and  moral  support.  In  education,  as  in  politics  and  religion,  a 
firm  belief  in  certain  first  principles  is  necessary  in  order  to  give 
stability  to  character  and  to  make  continuous  growth  possible. 


PREFACE.  V 

For  the  ends  here  pointed  out,  it  is  not  required  that  educational 
creeds  should  be  uniform,  the  essential  thing  being  merely  that 
each  teacher  hold  fast  to  some  system  of  probable  truth ;  but  it  is 
necessary  that  each  one's  creed  be  elastic  enough  to  accommodate 
new  truths  or  modifications  of  old  truths.  We  may  well  take 
alarm  when  we  are  no  longer  conscious  of  such  internal  modifica- 
tions of  «ur  educational  beliefs.  The  best  service  a  book  can  ren- 
der a  teacher  is  to  assist  him  in  the  formation  of  his  opinions,  and 
for  this  purpose  it  must  be  dispassionate  in  tone  and  must  carry 
critical  insight  into  all  its  discussions.  This  volume  is  pervaded 
by  this  spirit,  so  wholesome  and  helpful,  and  I  experience  no  little 
happiness  from  the  thought  that  by  means  of  this  translation  I  may 
help  American  teachers  in  the  formation  of  a  rational  educational 
creed. 

The  catholic  spirit  everywhere  manifested  by  M.  Compayre  jus- 
tifies me  in  expressing  mild  and  cautious  dissent  on  a  few  mani- 
festly open  questions ;  and  I  have  ventured  to  express  my  thought 
in  a  few  brief  articles  in  the  Appendix. 

If  this  volume  shall  meet  the  hearty  approval  that  was  given  the 
"  History  of  Pedagogy,"  I  shall  feel  anew  my  obligations  to  tha 
teaching  profession. 

W.  H.  PAYNE. 

NASHVILLE,  April  1,  1888. 


AUTHOR'S    PREFACE. 


I  DO  not  presume  to  offer  to  the  public,  in  this  volume,  a  com- 
plete treatise  on  education :  my  purpose  is  simpler  and  more  mod- 
est. In  bringing  together  the  lectures  given  in  the  higher  normal 
schools  of  Fontenay-aux-Roses  and  Saint  Cloud,  I  have  simply 
intended  to  compose  an  elementary  manual  of  teaching.  In  the 
vast  field  of  the  principles  and  the  practice  of  education,  I  have 
selected  only  the  indispensable  ideas,  those  of  which  no  one  who 
educates  and  instructs  children  can  afford  to  be  ignorant. 

In  the  composition  of  this  volume  I  have  made  free  use  of  the 
works  of  my  predecessors.  The  best  praise  that  can  be  given  them 
is  to  do  what  I  have  done,  —  quote  them  on  almost  every  page. 
However,  I  have  endeavored  not  to  imitate  them,  in  at  least  two 
respects,  —  their  dryness  and  their  prolixity. 

Too  many  manuals  of  teaching,  in  fact,  are  but  dry  nomencla- 
tures, in  which  the  spirit  of  pure  form  reigns  supreme  and  multiplies 
divisions,  definitions,  and  distinctions  of  every  sort,  with  a  pedan- 
tic display  which  seems  borrowed  from  the  ancient  logic. 

On  the  other  hand,  taking  advantage  of  the  intimate  relations 
between  pedagogy  and  the  philosophical  sciences,  other  writers  on 
education  have  given  undue  extension  to  the  sphere  of  their  art, 
having  included  in  it,  in  fact,  the  whole  of  psychology,  the  whole 
of  ethics,  and  the  whole  of  philosophy. 

I  have  sought  a  just  medium  between  these  extremes,  and  have 
attempted  to  make  my  treatment  of  the  subject  at  once  simple  and 
of  living  interest. 

I  do  not  think  it  enough  to  enumerate  a  certain  number  of 
abstract  rules  and  scholastic  formulas :  my  treatment  ascends  to 
principles,  but  with  as  much  discretion  as  possible.  From  the 

Til 


V1U  PREFACE. 

medley  of  modern  lucubrations  it  lops  off  everything  superfluous,  in 
order  to  reserve  for  use  what  is  really  essential ;  it  restricts  itself 
to  the  clearest  and  the  most  practical  conceptions. 

I  divide  my  treatise  into  two  very  distinct  parts.  I  first  study 
the  child  in  himself,  in  his  natural  development,  and  in  the  formal 
culture  of  his  faculties ;  and  then,  abandoning  the  subject  of  edu- 
cation, I  examine  the  object  of  it,  — that  is  to  say,  instruction  and 
discipline,  the  methods  of  the  one  and  the  principles  and  rules 
of  the  other. 

In  the  first  part,  I  call  to  my  aid  all  who  have  studied  child- 
hood, correcting  and  completing  their  observations  by  my  own 
studies. 

In  the  second  part,  I  have  expressly  consulted  those  who  have 
professional  competence,  who  have  in  their  own  practice  put  to 
the  test  methods  of  instruction  and  principles  of  discipline.  For 
example,  in  order  to  extract  the  practical  suggestions  that  are, 
as  it  were,  buried  in  them,  I  have  perused  the  voluminous  and 
interesting  Rapports  of  the  Inspectors-General  upon  the  condition 
of  primary  instruction.1 

Without  doubt,  the  best  system  of  teaching,  like  the  best  logic, 
is  still  that  which  we  make  for  ourselves  through  study,  experi- 
ence, and  personal  reflection.  Certainly,  it  is  not  required  to 
have  learned  by  heart  and  recited,  as  some  authors  of  teachers' 
manuals  still  demand,  a  catechism  of  method;  but  in  order  to 
aid  the  reflection  and  guide  the  experience  of  each  novice  in 
instruction,  the  book  is  very  far  from  being  useless,  though  it  do 
nothing  more  than  stimulate  personal  reflection.  It  is  just  in 
this  spirit,  less  for  imposing  doctrines  than  for  suggesting  reflec- 
tions, that  this  modest  volume  has  been  written.  I  trust  that  it 
may  receive  the  same  welcome  as  my  "History  of  Pedagogy," 
of  which  it  is  the  sequel. 

1  Paris,  Imprimerie  nationale,  1879-1880, 1881-1882. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

TRANSLATOR'S  PREFACE iii 

AUTHOR'S  PREFACE vii 

PART  I.  —  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY 1-261 

CHAPTER        I.  —  Education  in  General 3-27 

CHAPTER       II. — Physical  Education 28-51 

CHAPTER     III.  —  Intellectual  Education 52-72 

CHAPTER     IV.  —  The  Education  of  the  Senses 73-93 

CHAPTER       V.  —  Culture  of  the  Attention 94-113 

CHAPTER     VI.  —  Culture  of  the  Memory 114-137 

CHAPTER    VII.  —  Culture  of  the  Imagination 138-158 

CHAPTER  VIII. — The  Faculties    of    Keflection,  Judgment, 

Abstraction,  Reasoning 159-184 

CHAPTER      IX.  —  Culture  of  the  Feelings 185-202 

CHAPTER       X.  —  Moral  Education 203-226 

CHAPTER      XI.  —  Will,  Liberty,  and  Habit 227-244 

CHAPTER    XII.  —  The  Higher  Sentiments:  ^Esthetic  Educa- 
tion ;  Religious  Education 245-261 

PART  IL  —  PRACTICAL  PEDAGOGY 263-476 

CHAPTER        I.  —  Methods  in  General 265-289 

CHAPTER       IL  — Reading  and  Writing 290-309 

CHAPTER     III.  —  Object-lessons       810-324 

CHAPTER     IV.  —  The  Study  of  the  Mother  Tongue  .    .    .    .  825-342 

CHAPTER       V.  —  The  Teaching  of  History 343-361 

ix 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER     VI.  — The  Teaching  of  Geography 362-378 

CHAPTER    VII.— The  Teaching  of  the  Sciences 379-396 

CHAPTER  VIII.  —  Morals  and  Civic  Instruction 397-416 

CHAPTER      IX.  —  Drawing.  —  Music.  —  Singing 417-432 

CHAPTER       X. — The  Other  Exercises  of  the  School    .    .    .  433-446 

CHAPTER     XI.  —  Rewards  and  Punishments 447-462 

CHAPTER    XII.  —  Discipline  in  General 463-476 

APPENDIX 477-481 

A.  The  Doctrine  of  Memory 477 

B.  Analysis  and  Synthesis 478 

C.  The  Problem  of  Primary  Reading 479 

D.  The  Value  of  Subjects 480 

INDEX                                     .  483-491 


PART     FIRST. 

THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 


THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 


CHAPTER    I. 

EDUCATION    IN    GENEKAL. 

1.  ORIGIN  OF  THE  WORD  EDUCATION.  —  "  Education  "  is 
a  word  relatively  new  in  the  French  language.     Montaigne 
employs  it  only  once,  in  a  sentence  often  quoted :    "I  pro- 
test against  all  violence  in  the  education  of  a  tender  soul, 
which  is  being  trained  for  honor  and  liberty."1     With  this 
exception,  he  always  employs  the  expression  institution  des 
enfants,  from  which  we  have   the  word  instituteur.      The 
writers  of  the  sixteenth  century  were  accustomed  to  use 
the   word   nournture   in    the   same   sense,  as   in   the  well- 
known  proverb,  Nourriture  passe  nature  (Nurture  is  more 
than   Nature).     But  in  the   seventeenth    century,    '•  educa- 
tion "  comes  into  current  use  to  designate  the  art  of  train- 
ing men. 

2.  EDUCATION  is  THE  PREROGATIVE  OF  MAN.  —  To  man 
must   be    reserved    the    noble   term    education.      Training 
suffices  for  animals,  and  cultivation  for  plants.     Man  alone 
is  susceptible  of  education,  because  he  alone  is  capable  of 
governing  himself,  and  of  becoming  a  moral  being.     An 
animal,  through  its  instincts,  is  all  that  it  can  be,  or  at 
least  all  that  it  has  need  of  being.     But  man,  in  order  to 

1  Montaigne,  Essais,  I.,  II.,  Chap.  VIII. 


4  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

perfect  himself,  has  need  of  reason  and  reflection ;  and  as 
at  birth  he  does  not  himself  possess  these  qualities,  he  must 
be  brought  up  by  other  men. 

3.  Is  THERE  A  SCIENCE  OP  EDUCATION?  —  No  one  doubts, 
to-day,  the  possibility  of  a  science  of  education.     Education 
is  itself  an  art,  skill  embodied  in  practice ;    and  this  art 
certainly  supposes  something  besides  the  knowledge  of  a 
few  rules    learned   from    books.      It   requires   experience, 
moral  qualities,  a  certain  warmth  of  heart,  and  a  real  in- 
spiration of  intelligence.     There  can  be  no  education  with- 
out an  educator,  any  more  than  poetry  without  a  poet, — that 
is,  without  some  one  who  by  his  personal  qualities  vivifies 
and  applies  the  abstract  and  lifeless  laws  of  treatises  on 
education.      But,  just   as  eloquence   has  its   rules  derived 
from  rhetoric,  and  poetry  its  rules  derived  from  poetics ; 
just  as,  in  another  order  of  ideas,  medicine,  which  is  an 
art,    is   based   upon   the   theories   of    medical   science ;    so 
education,    before    being  '  an    art    in    the    hands    of    the 
masters  who  practise  it,  who  enrich  it  by  their  versatility 
and  their  devotion,  who  put  upon  it  the  impress  of  their 
mind   and   heart,  —  education   is  a  science  which   philoso- 
phy deduces  from  the  general  laws  of  human  nature,  and 
which  the   teacher   perfects   by   inductions    from    his   own 
experience. 

There  is,  therefore,  a  science  of  education,  a  practical 
and  applied  science,  which  now  has  its  principles  and  laws, 
which  gives  proof  of  its  vitality  by  a  great  number  of  pub- 
lications, both  in  France  and  abroad,  and  which  has  also 
its  peculiar  designation,  Pedagogy,  although  there  is  still 
hesitation  in  adopting  it. 

4.  PEDAGOGY  AND  EDUCATION.  — It  is  to  be  regretted  that 
so  many  writers  still  confound  pedagogy  with  education. 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  5 

There  is  more  than  a  shade  of  difference  between  these  two 
terms.  Pedagogy,  so  to  speak,  is  the  theory  of  education, 
and  education  the  practice  of  pedagogy.  Just  as  one  may 
be  a  rhetorician  without  being  an  orator,  so  one  may  be 
a  pedagogue  —  that  is,  may  have  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
the  rules  of  education  —  without  being  an  educator,  without 
having  practical  skill  in  the  training  of  children.1 

"To  form  a  man,"  says  Marion,  eloquently,  "is  a  fine  art,  a 
perilous  undertaking.  In  this  art  do  not  venture  the  infallibility 
of  a  systematic  geometry,  and  do  not  expect  from  it  the  supreme 
tranquillity  of  finely  wrought  demonstrations.  In  the  prosecution 
of  this  art  there  will  be  contest,  the  unforeseen,  brusque  transi- 
tions, whims,  failures,  recoveries,  inertia,  the  miracles  of  free  and 
active  nature.  There  will  be  all  the  tumultuous  ebb  and  flow,  the 
bursting  into  harmony  and  the  degenerating  into  chaos,  which 
are  in  man  as  well  as  in  the  sea."2 

But  from  these  difficulties  in  practice  we  must  not  con- 
clude either  that  the  rules  of  education  do  not  exist,  or  that 
it  is  useless  to  know  them.  In  medicine  also  how  much 

1  M.  Compayre's  use  of  the  terms  pedagogy  and  pedagogue  may  be 
illustrated  as  follows :  A  writer  who  discusses  educational  questions 
from  the  theoretical  point  of  view  is  a  pedagogue,  and  his  treatise  is 
a  work  on  pedagogy;  while  a  man  who  directs  educational  affairs 
without  actually  teaching,  as  a  superintendent  of  public  instruction 
or  of  schools,  is  an  educator.    A  history  of  pedagogy  is  an  account 
of  the  rise,  progress,  and  present  state  of  educational  theories  or  ideas ; 
while  a  history  of  education  is  an  account  of  the  rise,  progress,  and 
present  state  of  educational  systems  and  establishments.    In  other 
words,  education  in  its  theoretical  or  scientific  aspect  is  pedagogy ; 
while  in  its  practical  aspect,  or  in  its  art-phase,  it  is  education.    But 
if  distinctive  terms  are  needed  to  designate  these  two  phases,  why 
not  call  education  in  the  first  sense  Pedagogics,  and  in  the  second 
Pedagogy?    We  might  thus  escape  the  tautology  of  theoretical  peda- 
gogy and  the  inconsistency  of  practical  pedagogy.    (P.) 

2  Marion's  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Education,  Manuel  general 
de  Pinstruction  primaire,  Paris,  1884,  p.  13. 


6  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

that  is  unforeseen,  what  freaks  of  nature,  how  many  sur«    /) 
prises  that   baffle  our  fears   or  deceive  our   hopes !     A 
yet  what  we  demand  above  all  else  of  a  physician  is  to 
have  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  principles  and  rules  of 
his  art. 

Let  it  not  be  said,  then,  that  for  educating  men  there  is 
required  neither  precision  of  analysis  nor  science.  Let  it 
be  said,  rather,  that  all  this  is  not  enough,  because  living 
nature,  by  its  sudden  upheavals  and  unexpected  falls, 
by  its  mobility  and  its  diversity,  can  hold  in  check  the 
best-established  calculations.  But  recollect,  however,  that 
there  are  rules  and  principles,  if  not  infallible,  at  least 
generally  efficacious.  Recollect,  also,  that  these  rules  are 
becoming  more  exact  day  by  day,  and  that  with  the  progress 
of  science  this  approximation  becomes  greater  and  greater. 

The  further  we  go,  the  better  we  know  childhood,  and  the 
more  deeply  we  fathom  the  laws  of  human  nature ;  the  more 
perfect,  also,  educational  methods  become,  and  the  more 
nearly  they  approach  the  truth.  It  is  said  that  experience 
is  everything  and  science  nothing ;  but  what,  pray,  is 
science  itself,  if  not  the  experience  of  the  ancients  and  of 
all  those  who  have  preceded  us?  Then  let  us  not  allow 
ourselves  to  think,  with  Diesterweg,  that  the  study  of  peda- 
gogy is  of  no  account,  and  that  one  is  born  an  educator 
just  as  one  is  born  a  poet.1  Let  us  not  fall  into  the  pre- 
judice of  thinking  that  a  professor  or  a  teacher  has  no  more 
need  of  knowing  the  theoretical  laws  of  education  and 
instruction  than  we  have  of  learning  the  functions  of  diges- 
tion from  a  book  on  physiology,  in  order  that  our  food  may 
be  properly  digested.  In  the  matter  of  education,  that 
which  is  worth  still  more  than  inspiration  is  inspiration 
enlightened  and  regulated  by  science. 

1  (Euvres  Choisies  de  Diesterweg.    Hachette,  1884,  p.  272. 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  7 

5.  PEDAGOGY,  AND  ITS  SCIENTIFIC  PRINCIPLES. — Can  it 
be    said    that    pedagogy   has   now   become    an    organized 
science,  and  that  recent  progress  has  liberated  it  from  those 
gropings  and  uncertainties  which  every  science  traverses  in 
its  earlier  stages?    We  do  not  go  so  far  in  our  assumptions. 
Notwithstanding  the  great  feats  already  accomplished,  it  is 
still   necessary  to   repeat  to-day  what   Diesterweg   said  in 
1830.      The   scientific   coordination    of    the   precepts   and 
experiments  of  pedagogy  is  still  rather  an  aspiration  or  a 
hope  than  an  accomplished  fact. 

"Would  to  God,"  he  wrote,  "that  we  had  made  enough 
progress  so  that,  I  do  not  say  all  men,  but  merely  men  of  culture, 
were  agreed  as  to  the  best  mode  of  education ;  that  we  could  not 
only  determine  with  certainty  what  is  good  and  what  is  bad,  and 
what  the  results  are  of  such  or  such  a  method,  but  also  give  a 
reason  for  our  conclusions."1 

But  if  we  still  have  need  of  seeking  the  solution  of  certain 
problems,  we  at  least  know  where  these  solutions  can  be 
found,  and  from  what  sources  we  must  draw  in  order  to 
give  more  and  more  exactness  to  our  conceptions  of  educa- 
tion. Like  all  the  practical  sciences,  pedagogy  rests  upon 
certain  theoretical  data,  or  upon  a  scientific  basis. 

6.  THE  RELATION  OF  PEDAGOGY  TO  PSYCHOLOGY. — Just 
as  the  physician  ought  to  know  the  organs  and  the  func- 
tions of  the  body  which  he  treats,  the  farmer  the  nature  of 
the  soil  which  he  cultivates,  and  the  sculptor  the  qualities 
of  the  marble  which  he  chisels  and  of  the  clay  which  he 
kneads,  so  the  teacher  cannot  do  witho.it  the  knowledge  of 
the  laws  of   the   mental  organization, — that  is,  the  study 
of  psychology. 

In  truth,  the  rules  for  teaching  are  but  the  laws  of  psy- 

1  Diesterweg,  op.  cit.,  p.  64. 


8  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

chology  applied,  transformed  into  practical  maxims,  and 
tested  by  experience. 

Psychology  is  the  basis  of  all  the  practical  sciences  which 
have  to  do  with  the  moral  faculties  of  man ;  but  the  other 
sciences  which  are  derived  from  psychology  treat  of  but 
certain  energies  of  the  human  soul, — logic,  of  thought; 
aesthetics,  of  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful ;  ethics,  of  the 
will.  Pedagogy  alone  embraces  .all  faculties  of  the  soul, 
and  should  put  under  contribution  the  whole  of  psychology. 

7.  Is  THERE  AN  INFANT  PSYCHOLOGY? It  is  not,  how- 

ever,  general  psychology,  the  psychology  of  the  grown  man, 
which  alone  ought  to  inspire  the  teacher.  Whatever  may 
have  been  said  about  it,  there  is  a  psychology  of  the  child, 
because  there  is  a  childhood  of  the  soul.  The  idealists,  like 
Malebranche,  should  be  the  only  ones  to  assert  that  the 
human  spirit  has  no  age,  that  from  the  hour  of  birth  it  is 
all  that  it  can  become,  and  that  it  is  already  capable  of 
comprehending  the  loftiest  abstractions.1  To  an  impartial 
observer  it  is  evident  that  the  mind  is  developed  and 
formed  in  accordance  with  certain  laws  of  growth  which 
definitely  constitute  the  psychology  of  the  child.  Psychol- 
ogy, in  a  word,  is  not  an  invariable  geometry,  establishing 
immutable  theorems,  but  a  history,  at  least  for  the  first 
years  of  life,  which  relates  the  gradual  evolution  of  the 
different  faculties. 

It  has  been  truly  said  that  if  we  wish  to  train  a  man,  we 
must  know  the  psychology  of  men ;  but  we  would  add  that 
if  we  would  educate  a  child,  we  must  study  the  psychology 
of  the  child.2 

1  See  Compayre,  History  of  Pedagogy  (Boston :  1886),  p.  193. 

2  It  is  safer,  with  Pestalozzi,  to  look  for  the  man  in  the  child,  than 
to  regard  the  child  as  being  sui  generis.    The  progress  from  childhood 
to  manhood  is  an  insensible  transition ;  there  is  no  brusque  passage 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  9 

8.  THE  RELATIONS  OF  PEDAGOGY  WITH  OTHER  SCIENCES. 
—  Of   course,  since  pedagogy  embraces  the  whole    human 
being,  it  does  not  derive  its  inspiration   from   psychology 
alone.     In  order  to  give  a  competent  treatment  of  physical 
education,    and   even  of   certain  parts  of   intellectual   and 
moral  education,  biology  in  general,  and  more  particularly 
the   anatomy  and   physiology  of    man,    are   summoned  to 
render  important  services. 

In  the  same  way  it  would  be  easy  to  prove  that  pedagogy 
cannot  dispense  with  the  aid  of  ethics  and  logic.  Educa- 
tion tends  to  lead  man  to  his  proper  destination,  and  it  is 
ethics  which  determines  the  real  end  of  human  actions, 
the  essential  nature  of  all  that  we  call  good  and  desirable. 
On  the  other  hand,  education  is  the  culture  of  thought 
and  reason,  and  it  is  logic  which  makes  known  the  best 
methods  of  weighing  knowledges  in  order  to  discover  the 
truth. 

Pedagogy,  or  the  science  of  education,  then,  has  its 
method,  which  consists  in  observing  all  the  facts  of  the 
physical  and  moral  life  of  man,  or  rather  in  making  use  of 
the  general  laws  which  inductive  reflection  has  constructed 
from  these  facts.  Let  us  now  define  with  greater  precision 
its  object  and  the  principles  which  ought  to  guide  it. 

9.  DIFFERENT  DEFINITIONS  OF  EDUCATION. — The  educa- 
tors are  rare  who,  like  Locke,  have  written  formal  treatises 
on  education  without  defining  it,  without  collecting  into  one 
single  formula  the  elements  of  their  system.1     In  general, 

from  one  to  the  other,  such  as  seems  to  be  implied  in  the  term  "  infant 
psychology."  However,  this  distinction  will  be  serviceable  if  it  shall 
emphasize  the  need  of  adapting  instruction  to  the  powers  and  the 
mental  needs  of  the  child.  Dr.  White's  discussion  of  this  subject 
(Elements  of  Pedagogy)  is  valuable.  (P.) 
1  See  the  opening  paragraphs  of  Thoughts  on  Education. 


10  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

each  writer  on  education  has  his  own  definition,  and  this 
diversity  is  chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  the  greater  number 
have  wrongly  included  in  their  definitions  the  indication 
of  the  particular  methods  and  different  means  which  educa- 
tion calls  to  its  aid. 

It  will  not  be  without  interest  to  mention  in  this  place  the 
principal  definitions  that  are  of  note,  either  on  account  of 
the  names  of  their  authors  or  of  the  relative  exactness  of 
their  connotations. 

One  of  the  most  ancient,  and  also  one  of  the  best,  is  that 
of  Plato:  — 

"  The  purpose  of  education  is  to  give  to  the  body  and  to  the 
soul  all  the  beauty  and  all  the  perfection  of  which  they  are 
capable." 

The  perfection  of  human  nature,  such  indeed  is  the  ideal 
purpose  of  education. 

It  is  in  the  same  sense  that  Kant,  Madame  Necker  de 
Saussure,  and  Stuart  Mill  have  given  the  following  defini- 
tions :  — 

"Education  is  the  development  in  man  of  all  the  perfection 
which  his  nature  permits." 

"  To  educate  a  child  is  to  put  him  in  a  condition  to  fulfil  as 
perfectly  as  possible  the  purpose  of  his  life." 

"  Education  includes  whatever  we  do  for  ourselves  and  whatever 
is  done  for  us  by  others,  for  the  express  purpose  of  bringing  us 
nearer  to  the  perfection  of  our  nature." 

Here  it  is  the  general  purpose  of  education  which  is  prin- 
cipally in  view.  But  the  term  perfection  is  somewhat 
vague  and  requires  some  explanation.  Herbert  Spencer's 
definition  responds  in  part  to  this  need  :  — 

"  Education  is  the  preparation  for  complete  living." 

But  in  what  does  complete  living  itself  consist?  The 
definitions  of  German  educators  give  us  the  reply :  — 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  11 

"  Education  is  at  once  the  art  and  the  science  of  guiding  the 
young  and  of  putting  them  in  a  condition,  by  the  aid  of  instruc- 
tion, through  the  power  of  emulation  and  good  example,  to 
attain  the  triple  end  assigned  to  man  by  his  religious,  social,  and 
national  destination."  (Niemeyer.) 

"Education  is  the  harmonious  and  equable  evolution  of  the 
human  faculties  by  a  method  founded  upon  the  nature  of  the 
mind  for  developing  all  the  faculties  of  the  soul,  for  stirring  up 
and  nourishing  all  the  principles  of  life,  while  shunning  all  one- 
sided culture  and  taking  account  of  the  sentiments  on  which 
the  strength  and  worth  of  men  depend."  (Stein.) 

"  Education  is  the  harmonious  development  of  the  physical, 
intellectual,  and  moral  faculties."  (Denzel.) 

These  definitions  have  the  common  fault  of  not  throwing 
into  sharper  relief  the  essential  character  of  education 
properly  so  called,  which  is  the  premeditated,  intentional 
action  which  the  will  of  a  man  exercises  over  the  child 
to  instruct  and  train  him.  They  might  be  applied  equally 
well  to  the  natural,  instinctive,  and  predetermined  develop- 
ment of  the  human  faculties.  In  this  respect  we  prefer  the 
following  formulas :  — 

"  Education  is  the  process  by  which  one  mind  forms  another 
mind,  and  one  heart  another  heart."  (Jules  Simon.) 

"  Education  is  the  sum  of  the  intentional  actions  by  means 
of  which  man  attempts  to  raise  his  fellows  to  perfection." 
(Marion.) 

"  Education  is  the  sum  of  the  efforts  whose  purpose  is  to  give 
to  man  the  complete  possession  and  correct  use  of  his  different 
faculties."  (Henry  Joly.) 

Kant  rightly  demanded  that  the  purpose  of  education 
should  be  to  train  children,  not  with  reference  to  their 
success  in  the  present  state  of  human  society,  but  with 
reference  to  a  better  state  possible  in  the  future,  in  accord- 
ance with  an  ideal  conception  of  humanity.  We  must 
surely  assent  to  these  high  and  noble  aspirations,  without 


12  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

forgetting,    however,    the    practised    aims    of    educational 
effort.     It  is  in  this  sense  that  James  Mill  wrote  :  — 

"  The  end  of  education  is  to  render  the  individual  as  much  as 
possible  an  instrument  of  happiness,  first  to  himself,  and  next  to 
other  beings." 

Doubtless  this  definition  is  incomplete,  but  it  has  the 
merit  of  leading  us  back  to  the  practical  realities  and 
the  real  conditions  of  existence.  The  word  happiness  is 
the  utilitarian  translation  of  the  word  perfection.  A  lofty 
idealism  should  not  make  us  forget  that  the  human  being 
aspires  to  be  happy,  and  that  happiness  is  also  a  part 
of  his  destination.  Moreover,  without  losing  sight  of 
the  fact  that  education  is  above  all  else  the  disinterested 
development  of  the  individual,  of  one's  personality,  it 
is  well  that  the  definition  of  education  should  remind  us 
that  we  do  not  live  solely  for  ourselves,  for  our  own 
single  and  selfish  perfection,  but  that  we  also  live  for 
others,  and  that  our  existence  is  subordinate  to  that  of 
others. 

What  are  we  to  conclude  from  this  review  of  so  many 
different  definitions?  First,  that  their  authors  have  often 
complicated  them  by  the  introduction  of  various  elements 
foreign  to  the  exact  notion  of  the  word  education,  and  that 
it  would  perhaps  be  better  to  be  satisfied  to  say,  with 
Rousseau,  for  the  sake  of  uniting  simply  on  the  sense  of 
the  word,  "  Education  is  the  art  of  bringing  up  children  and 
of  forming  men."  But  if  we  are  determined  to  include  in 
the  definition  of  education  the  determination  of  the  subject 
upon  which  it  acts  and  the  object  which  it  pursues,  we  shall 
find  the  elements  of  such  a  conception  here  and  there  in  the 
different  formulas  which  we  have  quoted.  It  would  suffice 
to  bring  them  together  and  to  say :  — 

"  Education  is  the  sum  of  the  reflective  efforts  by  which  we  aid 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  13 

nature  in  the  development  of  the  physical,1  intellectual,  and  moral 
faculties  of  man,  ih  view  of  his  perfection,  his  happiness,  and  his 
social  destination." 

10.  DIVISION  OF  EDUCATION.  —  Education  comprises  dif- 
ferent divisions,  which  correspond  to  a  similar  division  of 
the  faculties  of  human  nature. 

Whatever  theory  may  be  held  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
soul,  whether  it  be  considered  as  a  distinct  and  independent 
substance  or  as  related  to  the  body  as  effect  to  its  cause, 
the  duality  of  the  physical  and  the  moral  is  no  less  real  on 
this  account.  Hence  there  is  a  prime  distinction  to  be 
made  between  the  education  of  the  body  and  the  education 
of  the  mind. 

But  the  mind  itself  is  subdivided  into  a  certain  number 
of  faculties.  Thus  it  has  long  been  the  custom  to  distin- 
guish intellectual  education  from  moral  education,  the  first 
cultivating  the  intellectual  faculties  and  communicating 
knowledges,  the  other  developing  the  heart  and  the  will, 
and  forming  the  sentiments,  the  habits,  the  conscience,  and 
the  moral  powers. 

In  truth,  it  were  preferable,  having  once  started  in  this 
line  of  thought,  to  follow  to  the  end  the  psychological 
division  of  the  faculties,  and  to  distinguish  the  education 

1  In  a  definition  of  education  we  cannot  omit  the  development  of 
the  physical  faculties.  Yet  many  educators  pass  them  by  in  silence. 
This  is  easily  accounted  for  in  the  case  of  theologians,  like  Dupan- 
loup,  who  define  education  as  "the  art  of  preparing  for  the  life 
eternal  by  exalting  the  present  life."  But  it  is  not  so  easy  to 
explain  what  Mr.  Bain  says :  "  Physical  education,  however  important 
it  may  be,  may  be  kept  quite  separate."  (Education  as  a  Science,  p.  3.) 
So  an  English  writer,  James  Sully,  defines  education  in  too  narrow 
a  sense  when  he  says  that  it  is  "  the  practical  science  which  aims  at 
cultivating  the  mind  on  the  side  of  Knowing,  Feeling,  and  Willing 
alike."  (Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  15.) 


14  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

of  the  intelligence,  the  education  of  the  sentiments,  and  the 
education  of  the  will. 

Horace  Mann,  the  American  educator,  distinguished  the 
three  essential  parts  of  education  in  the  following  eloquent 
extract : — 

"By  the  word  education  I  mean  much  more  than  the  ability  to 
read,  write,  and  keep  common  accounts.  I  comprehend,  under 
this  noble  word,  such  a  training  of  the  body  as  shall  build  it  up 
with  robustness  and  vigor,  at  once  protecting  it  from  disease  and 
enabling  it  to  act  formatively  upon  the  crude  substances  of 
nature, — to  turn  a  wilderness  into  cultivated  fields,  forests  into 
ships,  or  quarries  and  clay-pits  into  villages  and  cities.  I  mean 
also  to  include  such  a  cultivation  of  the  intellect  as  shall  enable 
it  to  discover  those  permanent  and  mighty  laws  which  pervade  all 
parts  of  the  created  universe,  whether  material  or  spiritual.  This 
is  necessary,  because,  if  we  act  in  obedience  to  these  laws,  all  the 
resistless  forces  of  Nature  become  our  auxiliaries  and  cheer  us  on 
to  certain  prosperity  and  triumph  ;  but  if  we  act  in  contravention 
or  defiance  of  these  laws,  then  Nature  resists,  thwarts,  baffles  us, 
and  in  the  end  it  is  just  as  certain  that  she  will  overwhelm  us  with 
ruin,  as  it  is  that  God  is  stronger  than  man.  And,  finally,  by  the 
term  Education  I  mean  such  a  culture  of  our  moral  affections 
and  religious  susceptibilities  as,  in  the  course  of  Nature  and 
Providence,  shall  lead  to  a  subjection  or  conformity  of  all  our 
appetites,  propensities,  and  sentiments  to  the  will  of  Heaven."  l 

11.  ANOTHER  DIVISION  OF  EDUCATION.  —  The  preceding 
division  is  founded  on  the  consideration  of  the  subject,  — 
that  is,  of  the  faculties  of  man ;  but  if  we  regard  the  object, 
or  the  end  of  education,  other  divisions  are  made  necessary. 

In  fact,  a  general  or  liberal  education,  which  is  meet  for 
all,  is  one  thing,  and  a  professional  or  technical  education, 
which  prepares  only  for  a  given  vocation,  is  quite  another. 
At  the  normal  school,  for  example,  it  is  not  the  purpose 


1  Lectures  on  Education.    Boston,  1855,  pp.  117, 118. 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  15 

merely  to  educate  men,  but  to  train  teachers ;  to  a  general 
education  there  is  added  a  special  education,  an  education 
in  pedagogy. 

"  These  two  species  of  education,"  says  Dupanloup,  "  a  general 
and  liberal  education,  and  a  special  and  professional  education, 
are  equally  important  to  man.  Moreover,  they  are  not  opposed  to 
one  another.  Directly  to  the  contrary,  they  strengthen  and 
perfect  one  another ;  each  is  accomplished  through  the  other.  To 
neglect  one  to  the  advantage  of  the  other  would  be  to  weaken 
them,  and  often  to  ruin  both  at  once."  1 

12.  LIBERAL  EDUCATION. — The  true  term  which  should 
be  applied  to  the  education  which  is  general  and  essential  is 
"liberal  education,"  although  this  term  has  till  now  been 
expressly  reserved  for  the  studies  which  prepare  for  the 
liberal  professions. 

If  all  men  are  free,  morally  free  in  the  determination 
of  their  actions,  and  politically  free  through  their  participa- 
tion in  the  government  of  the  society  of  which  they  form 
a  part,  is  it  not  evident  that  they  all  have  the  right,  what- 
ever may  be  their  condition,  to  a  liberal  education  which 
enlightens  and  emancipates  their  mind  and  their  will  ?  For- 
merly the  classical  humanities,  the  dead  languages,  were 
regarded  as  the  sole  instrument  of  a  liberal  education ;  but 
to-day  historical  and  scientific  studies,  even  reduced  to 
their  simplest  elements,  appear  to  us  to  be  studies  truly 
liberalizing,  and  constitute  what  might  be  called  the  primary 
humanities.  Even  the  physical  exercises  which  give  agility 
to  the  body  and  prepare  it  to  become  at  a  later  period  the 
docile  instrument  of  professional  education,  constitute  in 
one  sense  a  part  of  a  liberal  education. 

"  That  man  has  received  a  liberal  education,"  says  Mr.  Huxley, 
"  who  has  been  so  trained  in  youth  that  his  body  is  the  ready 

1  Dupanloup,  De  I' Education,  tome  I.,  p.  312. 


16  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

servant  of  his  will,  and  does  with  ease  and  pleasure  all  the  work 
that,  as  a  mechanism,  it  is  capable  of ;  whose  intellect  is  a  clear, 
cold,  logical  engine,  with  all  its  parts  of  equal  strength  and  in 
smooth  working  order,  ready,  like  a  steam-engine,  to  be  turned  to 
any  kind  of  work,  and  spin  the  gossamers  as  well  as  forge  the 
anchors  of  the  mind ;  whose  mind  is  stored  with  a  knowledge  of 
the  great  and  fundamental  truths  of  Nature  and  of  the  laws  of  her 
operations ;  one  who,  no  stunted  ascetic,  is  full  of  life  and  fire,  but 
whose  passions  are  trained  to  come  to  heel  by  a  vigorous  will,  the 
servant  of  a  tender  conscience ;  who  has  learned  to  love  all  beauty, 
whether  of  Nature  or  of  art,  to  hate  all  vileness,  to  respect  others 
as  himself."  1 

It  is  not  necessary,  then,  in  order  to  receive  a  liberal 
education,  to  aim  at  a  high  intellectual  instruction.  It 
suffices  that  the  elementary  instruction  has  been  directed  in 
such  a  way  as  to  prepare  for  the  free  development  of  the 
reason.  It  may  be  said,  in  one  sense,  that  the  old  educa- 
tion of  the  Jesuits  was  not  a  liberal  education,  since  it  did 
not  tend  in  a  sufficient  degree  towards  the  emancipation  of 
the  will  and  the  mind.  On  the  contrary,  a  poor  workman 
gives  his  children  a  liberal  education  if  he  strives  to  open 
their  intelligence  and  to  fortify  their  moral  energy,  even 
though  it  is  within  his  power  to  teach  them  nothing  else 
than  the  elements  of  the  sciences. 

13.  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  NATURE. — Especially  since 
Rousseau's  time,  educational  writers  are  fond  of  repeating 
that  the  grand  principle  of  education  is  conformity  to  the 
laws  of  nature.  We  do  not  intend  to  oppose  this  notion. 
The  nearer  we  come  to  the  natural  needs  of  the  child,  the 
more  fully  we  take  into  account  his  aptitudes,  the  more 
perfectly  shall  we  adapt  the  objects  and  the  methods  of 
instruction  to  the  progressive  development  of  his  faculties, 

1  Lay  Sermons,  pp.  34,  36. 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  17 

and  to  the  greater  degree  shall  we  make  of  education  a 
useful  and  truly  efficacious  work,  particularly  if  we  take 
account,  not  only  of  the  general  nature  of  man,  but  of  the 
particular  nature  of  each  child. 

"Man,"  says  Diesterweg,  "ought  to  become  what  nature  has 
destined  him  to  be,  and  it  is  from  his  aptitudes  that  we  are  to 
infer  his  destination.  You  will  vainly  attempt  to  train  him  for 
things  to  which  he  is  not  adapted.  You  will  never  make  an  angel 
of  him,  for  he  was  not  born  for  that.  He  neither  can  be  nor 
ought  to  be  any  other  thing  than  a  man,  and  each  individual,  in 
his  turn,  becomes  what  his  aptitudes  demand  and  make  possible. 
Attempt,  then,  to  make  a  Mozart  of  a  deaf  mute  or  of  a  man  who 
has  no  ears." 

We  are  not  called  upon,  then,  as  was  formerly  done,  to 
contend  against  nature,  to  treat  her  as  an  enemy,  and  to 
resist  her  as  a  deadly  influence.  On  the  contrary,  we  must 
have  confidence  in  her,  without,  however,  going  so  far  as  to 
abandon  ourselves  entirely  to  her.  We  must  treat  her  as 
we  would  a  friend  to  whom  we  listen  and  whom  we  follow, 
but  to  whom  it  is  sometimes  necessary  to  refuse  certain 
concessions. 

14.  WHAT  ARE  WE  TO  UNDERSTAND  BY  NATURE?  —  But 
if  the  principle  of  nature  is  excellent,  we  cannot  conceal 
the  fact  that  this  term  is  vague  and  that  it  admits  of  equiv- 
ocation. In  reality,  what  is  called  nature  is  after  all  an 
ideal  which  each  educator  conceives  in  his  own  way.1 

"  What,"  says  Diesterweg  in  another  place,  "  is  conformity  to 
nature?  Where  shall  we  find  her?  How  shall  we  know  her? 
What  men  have  remained  faithful  to  her  ?  Must  we  look  for  them 
in  the  virgin  forests  of  America,  or  in  the  various  tribes  of  the 
South  Sea,  or  rather  in  the  civilized  nations  of  Europe  ?  Where 

1  In  Contributions  to  the  Science  of  Education  I  liave  discussed  the 
terra  "  Nature."  (P.) 


18  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

are  the  privileged  beings  who  have  been  so  fortunate  as  never  to 
have  withdrawn  from  the  watch-care  of  nature  ?  " 

To  find  an  answer  to  this  question,  there  is  no  other 
way  than  to  observe  the  child  with  impartiality  at  the  age 
when  the  conventionalities,  the  fashions,  and  the  arti- 
fices of  society  have  not  yet  spoiled  his  native  simplic- 
ity. As  Rousseau  said,  "  Let  us  study  the  man  in  the 
child." 


15.  RESTRICTIONS  TO  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  NATURE. — But 
however  good  our  opinion  may  be  of  human  nature,  we 
should  not  think  of  humoring  it  in  everything.  Mr.  Bain 
admits  that  there  are  evil  instincts,  such  as  anger,  hatred, 
antipathy,  jealousy,  and  scorn.  Educators  should  repress 
and  correct  them,  instead  of  encouraging  and  developing 
them. 

Moreover,  we  are  not  to  forget  that,  when  abandoned  to 
herself,  nature  makes  only  savages.  It  is  education  alone 
that  can  rescue  us  from  the  animal  state  and  make  men  of 
us.  As  Kant  has  said,  it  is  education  that  rids  us  of  our 
natural  savagery. 

"Man  cannot  become  man,  save  through  education.  He  is 
only  what  education  makes  him.  He  who  has  not  been  disciplined 
is  a  savage." 

In  other  terms,  it  is  not  enough  that  education  should  be 
inspired  by  nature  and  draw  her  rules  from  nature.  Educa- 
tion is  no  less  an  art  on  this  account ;  that  is,  a  body  of 
maxims  founded  on  the  experiences  of  successive  genera- 
tions of  men,  a  body  of  processes  brought  into  conformity 
with  the  new  elements  which  progress  and  civilization  have 
gradually  introduced  into  the  primitive  nature  of  man.  It 
is  not  a  question  of  educating  man  in  general,  but  the  man 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  19 

of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  man  of  a  certain  country,  a 
citizen,  a  Frenchman.1 

It  is  with  nature  in  education  as  with  universal  suffrage  in 
politics.  Doubtless  we  must  obey  the  majority,  the  law  of 
numbers,  in  our  social  affairs,  just  as  we  must  follow  nature 
in  education.  But  the  majority  itself  should  be  inspired  by 
reason  and  justice,  and  so  natural  education  ought  to  be 
but  the  development  of  the  reason  which  is  in  man.2 

16.  EDUCATION  THE  WORK  OF  LIBERTY.  —  Education, 
then,  is  not  the  training  of  an  inert  and  passive  being,  but 
the  development  of  a  being  that  is  free  and  active,  whose 
instruction  we  are  to  provoke,  and  whose  spontaneity  we 
are  to  excite. 

Education  has  often  been  likened  to  sculpture,  its  purpose 
being,  so  to  speak,  to  chisel  human  souls  according  to  a 
highly  wrought  model.  The  error  in  this  comparison  is 
forgetting  that  spirit  is  not  inert  matter  that  can  be  fash- 
ioned as  we  will,  that  passively  submits  to  whatever  we 
impose  on  it,  as  marble  or  wood  to  the  chisel  of  the  artist. 

1  There  has  been  no  greater  mistake  in  educational  theory  than  to 
assume  that  the  education  of  to-day  must  be  adjusted  in  accordance 
with  the  needs  of  primitive  man  or  of  primitive  society.  For 
example,  as,  historically,  the  family  came  before  the  state,  it  is 
assumed  that  now,  when  the  state  has  been  definitely  organized, 
family  duties  antedate  duties  to  civil  society.  But  tempora  mutantur, 
d  nos  cum  illis  mutamur.  Primitively,  parenthood  preceded  citizen- 
ship; but  now  citizenship  precedes  parenthood.  The  child  must  be 
educated,  not  for  the  primeval  world  of  barbarism  into  which  the 
parents  of  the  race  were  born,  but  for  the  world  re-created  by  human 
art,  into  which  he  himself  was  born.  (P.) 

2  Emerson  somewhere  uses  provocation  to  denote  the  spiritual  act 
of  teaching.  Professor  Jowett  makes  Plato  (Meno)  use  the  term  dicit 
to  express  the  same  fact  The  term  induce  perhaps  expresses  still 
more  correctly  the  real  nature  of  instruction  as  it  was  conceived  by 
Socrates.  (P.) 


20  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

Far  different  is  the  mind  of  the  child,  which  ceaselessly 
reacts  upon  that  of  the  educator,  and  mingles  its  own 
activity  with  his.  Education  is  a  work  in  which  pupil  and 
teacher  co-operate.  Often  the  young  co-worker  resists  by 
his  caprices,  by  a  sort  of  open  hostility ;  and  oftener  by  his 
inertia  he  disconcerts  the  plans  of  his  teacher  and  takes  no 
active  part  in  them.  But  in  an  education  well  administered, 
the  pupil  ought  to  be  associated  with  the  teacher.  On  his 
part  he  should  strive  to  reach  the  end  towards  which  he  is 
being  conducted.  By  his  personal  efforts  he  should  partici- 
pate in  the  education  which  he  receives. 

"  Teacher,"  said  Pestalozzi,1  eloquently,  "  be  assured  of  the  ex- 
cellence of  liberty,  and  do  not  allow  yourself  to  be  induced, 
through  vanity,  to  devote  yourself  to  the  production  of  immature 
fruits.  Let  your  pupil  be  as  free  as  he  can  be.  Carefully  provide 
everything  which  allows  you  to  grant  him  liberty,  tranquillity,  and 
unruffled  humor.  Everything,  absolutely  everything  that  you  can 
teach  him  through  the  natural  consequences  of  things,  do  not 
teach  him  through  language.  Allow  him  in  his  own  person  to 
see,  hear,  find,  fall,  get  up,  and  be  deceived.  No  words  when  the 
act,  the  thing  itself,  is  possible.  Whatever  he  can  do  himself, 
let  him  do.  Let  him  always  be  busy,  always  active ;  and  let  the 
time  during  which  you  do  not  disturb  him  in  the  least  be  the 
greatest  part  of  his  childhood.  You  will  find  out  that  nature 
teaches  him  much  better  than  men  can." 

17.  EDUCATION  A  WORK  OF  AUTHORITY. — It  was  a  wise 
saying  of  Kant  that  one  of  the  greatest  problems  of  educa- 
tion is  to  reconcile  the  liberty  of  the  child  with  the  necessity 
of  constraint. 

It  is  the  same  thought  which  troubled  Pestalozzi  when 
he  wrote :  — 

"I  often  find  myself  embarrassed  for  having  suppressed,  in 
1  Histoire  de  Pestalozzi,  par  Roger  de  Guimps,  p.  57. 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  21 

the  education  of  my  children,  the  tone  of  the  master's  authority. 
Where  shall  I  find  the  line  between  liberty  and  obedience? 

"  There  are  crises  in  which  the  liberty  of  the  child  would  work 
harm  to  him,  and  even  under  the  most  favorable  circumstances  it 
is  often  necessary  to  oppose  the  child's  will." 

Education  does  not  abandon  nature  to  herself,  but  over- 
sees and  directs  her,  and,  if  necessary,  constrains  her.  In 
a  general  way,  education  is  the  work  of  authority  as  much 
as  of  liberty,  and  the  authority  acquired  by  a  master  who 
knows  how  to  make  himself  loved  and  obeyed  will  permit 
him  to  employ  persuasion  oftener  than  constraint.  The 
more  authority  he  has,  the  less  need  he  will  have  to  use  it. 

One  of  the  masters  of  contemporary  pedagogy,  M.  Buisson, 
has  deftly  analyzed  the  conditions  of  this  authority. 

"  The  justification  of  the  special  authority  which  is  delegated 
to  the  teacher  in  education  is  that  it  is  the  only  means  of  assuring 
the  development  of  the  pupil.  In  attaining  this  result,  it  is 
evidently  necessary,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  teacher  really  have 
the  power  to  contribute  to  this  development,  and,  on  the  other, 
that  he  have  the  will. 

"  First,  he  must  have  the  power,  and  to  this  end  it  is  above 
all  else  necessary  that  he  know  what  he  ought  to  transmit,  and 
that  he  have  over  the  pupil  the  advantage  of  experience  and  of 
a  full  and  serene  possession  of  the  knowledge  whose  elements  he 
is  to  communicate. 

"  Nor  is  this  all.  Even  what  he  thoroughly  knows  he  must  still 
learn  to  communicate.  To  teach,  to  educate,  is  certainly  an  art 

which  has  its  rules  and  its  secrets There  are  necessary 

mental  conditions,  that  is,  aptitudes  and  habits,  which  allow  the 
teacher,  for  example,  if  he  is  giving  instruction,  to  present  his 
subject  with  system,  and  yet  with  variety ;  to  make  for  himself 
a  plan,  and  to  follow  it  without  falling  into  dogmatic  exactness ; 
to  know  how  to  make  a  truth  luminous  in  the  minds  of  children, 
to  insist  on  the  important,  and  to  sacrifice  or  postpone  the  acces- 
sory. If  the  teacher  is  giving  moral  training,  his  skill  should 
permit  him  to  notice  delicately,  and  to  correct  still  more  delicately, 


22  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

faults  of  mind  and  character ;  to  persuade  and  to  command,  as 
occasion  requires ;  to  encourage,  when  necessary,  and  just  enough 
not  to  develop  pride ;  finally,  to  govern  according  to  well-estab- 
lished principles,  and  yet  with  very  fine  shades  of  treatment,  those 
little  people,  so  much  the  more  difficult  to  manage  because  they 
are  so  frail  and  so  powerless  to  govern  themselves.  There  are 
also  necessary  conditions  of  character,  the  absence  of  which  would 
suffice  to  make  the  effort  to  instruct  a  failure :  an  even  temper, 
the  gift  of  patience,  a  bearing  which  is  not  exactly  that  of 
ordinary  life,  but  as  it  were  a- mingling  of  gravity  and  cheerfulness 
in  manner  which  at  once  captures  the  hearts  of  children ;  extreme 
precaution  in  shunning  the  very  things  which  in  society  and  in 
the  world  are  the  most  acceptable  and  the  most  sought  after. 
There  should  never  be  irony,  never  contradictions  and  paradoxes, 
never  anything  which  exalts  the  teacher  at  the  expense  of  the 
pupil,  —  much  indulgence,  and  no  trace  of  weakness ;  nothing  ex- 
citing or  brusque ;  an  inflexible  firmness  and  a  paternal  gentleness ; 
inexhaustible  simplicity  in  all  things;  finally,  a  constant  effort, 
which  becomes  insensible  in  the  course  of  time,  to  come  down  to 
his  plane,  to  understand  him,  to  sustain  him,  to  love  him. 

"  This  last  word  causes  us  to  pass  to  the  second  order  of  condi- 
tions. The  teacher  must  have  the  will  to  labor  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  child.  In  fact,  it  is  not  so  much  a  question  of 
knowledge  as  of  will.  If  his  heart  is  really  fixed  on  enriching  the 
patrimony  of  the  young  soul  which  is  confided  to  him,  the  teacher 
will  infallibly  succeed,  even  though  his  knowledge  is  limited.  If 
he  loves  his  pupils,  he  will  resolve,  as  it  were,  intuitively,  a  mass 
of  those  practical  problems  of  which  his  art  is  composed ;  for  it 
cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  education  is  an  art  which  is 
administered  rather  through  experience  than  through  formulas. 
The  teacher  will  hold  a  just  medium  between  authority  and 
liberty;  he  will  respect  the  initiative  of  the  child  without  demand- 
ing too  much  of  him  or  abandoning  him  too  much  to  himself ;  he 
will  gain  ascendency  in  proportion  as  he  is  preoccupied  the  less 
with  himself  and  the  more  with  his  pupil ;  he  will  perfect  himself 
in  order  to  perfect  his  pupil."  x 

1  Dictionnaire  de  Pedagogic,  art.  "  Eduoation." 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  23 

18.  POWER  AND  LIMITS  OF  EDUCATION. — Fontenelle  was 
certainly  wrong  when  he  said:  "A  good  education  does 
not  make  a  good  character,  nor  does  a  bad  education 
destroy  character."  On  the  contrary,  we  believe  that  edu- 
cation plays  an  important  part  even  in  the  formation  of 
the  higher  virtues  and  the  superior  qualities  of  the  mind. 
It  contributes  towards  making  or  unmaking  characters. 
But  we  shall  not  go  so  far  as  to  believe,  with  Locke  and 
Helvetius,  that  education  is  omnipotent.  Doubtless  it  may 
be  held  that  the  power  of  education  is  ideally  infinite  ;  *  but 
as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  limited  in  its  action,  either  through 
the  natural  aptitudes  and  qualities  of  the  individuals  upon 
whom  it  acts,  or  through  the  time  which  it  has  at  its  dis- 
posal. 

We  shall  not  say,  then,  with  Helvetius,  that  "all  men  are 
born  equal  and  with  equal  aptitudes,  and  that  the  differences 
among  men  are  due  to  education  alone."  We  must  take 
a  just  account  both  of  natural  qualities  and  of  the  acquired 
qualities  which  education  grafts  upon  the  natural  stock. 

A  contemporary  writer  is  also  mistaken  when  he  writes 
that  "  education  has  no  effect,  save  upon  natures  of  medi- 
ocre mould."2  It  is  not  true  that  birth  is  the  only  struggle 
endured  by  great  men,  and  we  freely  assert  that  the  in- 
fluence of  education  reaches  its  maximum  when  nature 
subjects  to  its  beneficent  action  her  richest  contingent  of 
powers  and  faculties.  Education  can  do  nothing  if  it  does 
not  come  in  contact  with  germs  to  develop ;  and  education 
reaches  its  highest  perfection  in  souls  when  these  germs  are 
the  most  numerous  and  the  best  nourished  by  native  aliment. 
If  one  were  disposed  to  exaggerate  the  power  of  education 
to  the  point  of  believing  that  it  can  transform  everything, 

1  Marion,  Cours  sur  la  Science  de  I' Education. 

2  Ribot,  De  Vlle'rtditt,  p.  480. 


24  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

it  would  suffice  to  remind  him  of  the  famous  example  of 
the  education  of  the  Dauphin  by  Bossuet,  the  excellence 
of  the  teacher  and  the  positive  mediocrity  of  the  pupil.  But 
if,  on  the  other  hand,  he  were  tempted  to  doubt  the  efficacy 
of  education,  we  would  cite  in  proof  of  it  the  education 
of  the  Duke  of  Bourgogne,  which,  directed  by  Fenelon, 
developed  almost  all  the  virtues  in  a  soul  where  nature 
seemed  to  have  sown  the  seeds  of  all  the  vices.1 

To  deny  the  power  of  education,  it  would  be  necessary  to 
begin  by  denying  the  influence  of  the  habits  which  play  so 
great  a  part  in  life,  and  almost  all  of  which  depend  on  the 
manner  in  which  we  have  been  brought  up.  Our  mind, 
like  our  character,  depends  in  great  part  on  the  manner 
of  our  education. 

"  Education,"  says  Guizot,  "  fortifies  the  weak  or  inert  faculties 
of  childhood.  No  one  is  ignorant  of  the  power  that  exercise  and 
habit  have  of  making  the  memory  more  facile  and  the  attention 
more  sustained.  Our  faculties,  instead  of  deteriorating,  grow 
stronger  by  use.  Examples  of  the  successful  application  of  the 
will  to  the  perfecting  of  a  given  quality  are  innumerable."2 

19.  EDUCATION  AND  SCHOOL. — It  is  true  that  in  order 
to  justify  the  power  which  we  ascribe  to  education,  we  must 
transcend  the  limits  of  the  school  and  interpret  education 
in  its  widest  and  broadest  sense.  In  fact,  there  is  not  only 
the  education  properly  so  called,  that  which  proceeds  from 
the  direct  action  of  teachers ;  but  there  is  the  education 
of  the  family,  and  also  that  of  the  social  environment  in 
which  we  live.  There  are  what  have  shrewdly  been  called 
the  occult  coadjutors  of  education,  —  climate,  race,  manners, 
political  institutions,  religious  beliefs.  There  is  also  a 

1  See  Compayre,  op.  cit.,  Chap.  VIII. 

2  Guizot,   Conseils   d'un  pere    sur    I'&ducation,   in    Meditations    et 
Etudes. 


EDUCATION   IN  GENERAL.  25 

personal  education,  that  which  one  gives  himself,  and  which 
continues  all  one's  life. 

But  the  agency  of  the  school  is  none  the  less  important 
on  this  account,  nor  the  responsibility  of  the  teacher  less 
fearful.  Self-education  is  scarcely  more  than  the  continua- 
tion of  the  good  habits  learned  at  school.  As  to  exterior 
iufluences,  they  are  but  auxiliaries  which  can  accomplish 
nothing  without  the  cooperation  of  a  regular  education,  or 
enemies  against  whom  we  must  react  through  a  good  train- 
ing in  the  schools.  "What  Leibnitz  said  becomes  more  and 
more  true,  that  "  the  masters  of  education  hold  in  their 
hands  the  future  of  the  world." 

20.  EDUCATION  IN  A  REPUBLIC.  —  Under  a  republican 
regime,  in  a  great  democracy  education  acquires  a  new  im- 
portance, because  there  must  then  be  demanded  of  the 
virtue,  the  wisdom,  and  the  liberty  of  each  citizen,  the 
order  and  the  peace  which  despotism  had  before  imposed 
on  ignorance  and  passive  obedience. 

"Republican  institutions,"  says  Horace  Mann,  "furnish  as 
great  facilities  for  wicked  men  in  all  departments  of  wickedness, 
as  phosphorus  and  lucifer  matches  furnish  to  the  incendiary." 1 

But  these  dangers  do  not  discourage  the  great  American 
philanthropist,  for,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  impossible  to 
take  a  backward  step.  "The  sun  can  as  easily  be  turned 
backwards  in  its  course,  as  one  particle  of  that  power  which 
has  been  conferred  upon  the  millions  can  be  again  monopo- 
lized by  the  few." 

But  it  is  also  in  the  name  of  human  dignity  and  of  its 
rights  that  it  is  meet  to  demand  the  free  development  of 
natural  energies,  and  protest  against  every  system  which 
would  assume  to  stifle  them. 

1  Horace  Mann,  op.  cit.,  p.  148. 


26  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"In  despotisms  the  divinely  formed  soul,  created  to  admire 
through  intelligence  this  glorious  universe ;  to  go  forth  through 
knowledge,  through  sympathy  with  all  human  fortunes ;  to  know 
its  Maker  and  its  immortal  destiny,  is  driven  back  at  every  door 
of  egress,  or  darkened  at  every  window  where  light  could  enter, 
and  is  chained  to  the  vassal  spot  which  gave  it  birth,  where  the 
very  earth,  as  well  as  its  inhabitant,  is  blasted  by  the  common 
curse  of  bondage.  In  Oriental  and  African  despotisms,  the  mind 
of  the  millions  grows  only  as  the  trees  of  a  noble  forest  could  grow 
in  the  rocky  depths  of  a  cavern,  without  strength  or  beauty  or 
healing  balm,  in  impurity  and  darkness,  fed  by  poisonous  exhala- 
tions from  stagnant  pools,  all  upward  and  outward  expansion 
introverted  by  solid  barriers,  and  forced  back  into  unsightly  forms. 
Thus  it  has  always  fared  with  the  faculties  of  the  human  soul 
when  concerned  in  despotism.  They  have  dwelt  in  intellectual, 
denser  than  subterranean,  darkness.  Their  most  tender,  sweet, 
and  hallowed  emotions  have  been  choked  and  blighted.  The 
pure  and  sacred  effusions  of  the  heart  have  been  converted  into 
hatred  of  the  good  and  idolatry  of  the  base,  for  want  of  the  light 
and  the  air  of  true  freedom  and  instruction ;  the  world  can  suffer 
no  loss  equal  to  that  spiritual  loss  which  is  occasioned  by  attempt- 
ing to  destroy,  instead  of  regulating  the  energies  of  the  mind." 1 

21.  CONCLUSION. — Education,  theii,  ought  to  be  at  once 
an  excitation  and  a  restraint.  Let  us  not  fear  to  affran- 
chise, to  emancipate  minds,  if  we  are  wise  enough  at  the 
same  time  to  discover  the  secret  of  teaching  them  modera- 
tion and  self-government,  if  through  sufficient  culture  we 
help  them  to  find  within  themselves  the  restraint  necessary 
to  reform  their  passions  and  evil  instincts. 

This  is  why  character  building  is  the  supreme  end  of 
education.  After  all,  it  is  according  to  our  character  that 
we  act,  and  it  is  of  much  more  consequence  that  we  act 
well  than  that  we  think  well.  It  is  true  that  our  character 
depends  preeminently  upon  our  sentiments  and  our  thoughts  ; 

1  Horace  Mann,  op.  cit,  pp.  144, 145. 


EDUCATION   IN   GENERAL.  27 

or,  in  other  terms,  that  moral  education  depends  in  part 
upon  intellectual  education.  But  moral  education  is  none 
the  less  the  final  term  of  our  efforts. 

And  to  attain  this  end  it  is  evidently  not  sufficient  to 
possess  wisdom,  instruction ;  there  must  be  joined  to  these 
moral  qualities  the  virtues  of  the  heart  and  the  will.  It 
has  been  said  that  the  effort  of  education  is  to  form  men. 
To  this  end  let  teachers  begin  by  being  men  themselves. 

"  Whoever  undertakes  the  education  of  another  should  begin 
by  completing  his  own.  Emile  Souvestre  has  exemplified  this 
truth  as  follows :  A  young  father,  in  anticipation  of  the  birth  of 
a  child,  surrounds  himself  with  books  on  education.  But  the  read- 
ing of  these  works  only  increases  his  uncertainties.  Finally,  he 
begins  to  reflect,  and,  considering  the  boundless  influence  of  the 
father  and  mother,  upon  the  tablet  which  he  had  prepared  for 
taking  notes,  below  the  title,  Educational  Precepts,  he  wrote  merely 
these  words :  to  become  better." 1 

1  Chauvet,  L'Education,  Paris,  1868,  p.  73. 


CHAPTER    II. 

PHYSICAL   EDUCATION. 

22.  A   SOUND   MIND   IN   A   SOUND   BODY.  —  "A   sound 
mind  in  a  sound  body,  —  this,"  says  Locke,  "is  the  short 
but  complete  definition  of  happiness  in  this  world."     Such, 
therefore,   ought   to   be  the   double  purpose  of   education. 
Physical  education  should  not  be  separated  from  intellectual 
and  moral  education.     And  this  for  two  reasons :  first,  be- 
cause bodily  health  and  strength  are  desirable  and  good  in 
themselves,  because  they  make  a  part  of  that  complete  and 
perfect  life  which  is  the  will  of  nature  and  the  dream  of 
education ;  and  then  because  the  development  of  the  body 
is  one  of  the  conditions,  one  of  the  means,  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  soul,  —  because  the  higher  life  of  the  spirit  is 
not  possible,   except  it  have  for  a  support  a   robust  and 
healthy  physical  life. 

23.  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION  FOR  THE  GOOD  OF  THE  BODY. — 
There  have  been  times  when  men  could  believe  that  the 
ideal  was  to  despise  the  body,  and  even  to  humiliate  it  and 
mortify  it,  that  this  lower  element  of  our  being  was  entitled 
to  no  respect,  to  no  care,  and  that  human  perfection  was 
in  proportion  to  the  diminution  and  the  decay  of  the  material 
forces.     Mysticism  proposed,  as  the  unique  purpose  of  life, 
spiritual  perfection ;  and  asceticism,  the  practical  applica- 
tion of  the  principles  of  mysticism,  took  up  arms  against 
the  body,  to  reduce  it  to  terms  by  fasting,  by  tortures,  by 

28 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  29 

privations  of  every  description,  —  if  possible,  to  annihilate 
it,  as  the  source  of  all  sin  and  of  all  evil. 

We  of  to-day  have  recovered  from  these  chimeras.  We 
regard  man  as  a  whole  which  is  not  to  be  mutilated  in  any 
of  its  parts.  Simply  because  they  are  inferior  in  dignity 
to  the  spiritual  forces,  the  energies  of  the  physical  organism 
none  the  less  deserve  to  be  respected  and  developed. 

"  As  remarks  a  suggestive  writer,"  says  Herbert  Spencer,  "  the 
first  requisite  to  success  in  life  is  'to  be  a  good  animal ' ;  and  to 
be  a  nation  of  good  animals  is  the  first  condition  of  national 
prosperity.  Not  only  is  it  that  the  event  of  a  war  often  turns  on 
the  strength  and  hardiness  of  soldiers ;  but  it  is  that  the  contests 
of  commerce  are  in  part  determined  by  the  bodily  endurance  of 
producers."  l 

Moreover,  it  is  not  simply  a  question  of  positive  and 
practical  interest ;  the  preservation  of  health  is  one  of  our 
duties.  Every  conscious  infraction  of  the  laws  of  hygiene 
is  a  culpable  act,  and,  as  Herbert  Spencer  has  justly 
observed,  every  prejudice  voluntarily  done  to  health  is  a 
physical  sin. 

24.  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION  FOR  THE  SAKE  OF  THE  MIND.  — 
A  thing  not  less  positive  is  that  there  is  a  solidarity  of 
interest  between  mind  and  body.  As  the  physical  and  the 
moral  are,  so  to  speak,  the  under  and  the  upper  textures 
of  the  same  fabric,  it  would  be  folly  to  suppose  that  we 
could  with  impunity  derange  the  under  without  by  the  same 
act  compromising  the  upper. 

The  Greeks  understood  this,  and  they  associated  the 
body  and  the  mind  in  one  harmonious  education,  in  order 
to  make  man  at  once  "  beautiful  and  good."  It  was  by 
them  that  Montaigne  was  inspired  when  he  wrote  his 
admirable  chapter  on  the  "Training  of  Children." 

1  Spencer,  Education,  p.  222. 


30  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  It  is  not  enough  to  toughen  the  mind  of  the  child ;  his  muscles 
must  be  toughened  also.  The  mind  is  too  hard  driven  if  it  is  not 
assisted ;  it  has  too  much  to  do  to  fill  two  offices  alone.  I  know 
how  much  mine,  so  prone  to  be  preoccupied  with  itself,  suffers 
from  being  tied  to  a  body  so  delicate  and  sensitive ;  and  in  my 
reading  I  often  notice  that  in  their  accounts  my  authors  adduce  as 
examples  of  magnanimity  and  courage,  what  ought  the  rather 
to  be  attributed  to  thickness  of  skin  and  hardness  of  bone." 

And  further  on :  — 

"  It  is  not  a  soul,  nor  yet  a  body,  which  we  are  educating,  but 
a  man,  and  we  must  not  divide  him.  And,  as  Plato  says,  we  must 
not  train  one  of  them  without  the  other,  but  we  must  drive  them 
abreast  like  a  span  of  horses  harnessed  to  the  same  shaft." 

The  moral  faculties  do  not  freely  expand,  except  when 
the  body  is  in  full  health ;  and  besides,  when  they  have 
once  been  developed,  they  do  not  come  into  free  exercise 
unless  they  can  avail  themselves  of  firm  and  agile  members. 
A  good  bodily  constitution  ' '  renders  the  operations  of  the 
mind  easy  and  sure ; "  and  at  the  same  time  that  it  con- 
tributes towards  forming  the  mind,  it  is  a  necessary  condi- 
tion for  the  outward  manifestation  of  spirit,  and  prevents 
the  mind  from  falling  back  upon  itself,  lost  in  futile  con- 
templations. 

I  well  know  that  we  sometimes  meet  with  intelligences 
of  the  first  order,  and  with  strong  and  courageous  wills, 
united  to  weak  and  sickly  bodies.  A  man  whose  physical 
life  is  but  a  perpetual  discomfort  may  be  distinguished 
from  all  others  by  the  energy  of  his  mind  and  the  eleva- 
tion of  his  heart.  The  example  of  Pascal,  the  invalid  and 
the  man  of  genius,  occurs  to  the  mind  of  every  one.  It  may 
really  happen  in  certain  cases,  by  a  mysterious  reaction, 
that  bodily  sufferings  may  refine  and  stimulate  the  moral 
faculties.  In  such  cases,  pain  is  the  principal  agent  in  this 
unusual  progress  of  the  intelligence.  But  these  exceptions 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  31 

prove  nothing  as  against  the  general  law.  With  good 
health,  Pascal  might  have  lived  longer,  and  probably  would 
have  lost  nothing  of  his  genius.  According  to  the  expres- 
sion which  he  himself  used,  it  will  not  do  to  despise  the 
bete,  for  sooner  or  later  it  will  have  its  revenge.  It  had 
its  vengeance  on  Pascal  by  killing  him. 

"  Physical  perfection  serves  to  assure  moral  perfection.  There 
is  nothing  more  tyrannical  than  an  enfeebled  organism.  Nothing 
sooner  paralyzes  the  free  activity  of  the  reason,  the  flight  of  the 
imagination,  and  the  exercise  of  reflection;  nothing  sooner  dries 
up  all  the  sources  of  thought  than  a  sickly  body  whose  functions 
languish,  and  for  which  every  effort  is  a  cause  of  suffering.  Then 
have  no  scruples ;  and  if  you  would  form  a  soul  which  is  to  have 
ample  development,  a  man  of  generous  and  intrepid  will,  a  work- 
man capable  of  great  undertakings  and  arduous  labors,  first,  and 
above  all,  secure  a  vigorous  organism,  of  powerful  resistance  and 
muscles  of  steel."1 

25.  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION  AS  A  PREPARATION  FOR  PRO- 
FESSIONAL EDUCATION. — Physical  education^  like  intellec- 
tual and  moral  education,  does  not  consist  merely  in  a 
disinterested  culture  of  natural  powers,  but  tends  towards 
a  practical  end ;  it  ought  to  be  a  preparation  for  life,  and, 
by  reason  of  its  very  nature,  a  preparation  for  professional 
education,  or  at  least  for  bodily  skill. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  introduce  into  the  education  of  all 
men  what  Locke  and  Rousseau  desired,  the  apprenticeship 
to  a  trade ;  but,  nevertheless,  under  all  circumstances  it  is 
well  to  know  how  to  use  one's  hands  and  one's  limbs. 

"One  of  the  highest  compliments  we  can  pay  a  man,"  says 
Saint-Marc  Girardin,  "is  to  say  that  he  knows  how  to  surmount 
difficulties,  not  through  artful  discourse  or  through  ingenious  con- 
versation, but,  if  necessary,  through  manual  dexterity  also;  to 

1  F.  Marion,  Cours  sur  la  Science  de  V  Education. 


32  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

come  off  conqueror,  not  merely  in  great  things,  but  in  small ;  not 
to  be  continually  in  need  of  using  the  arms  of  others  in  order  to 
lengthen  his  own,  and  to  be  embarrassed  neither  by  his  own  body 
nor  by  what  it  has  to  carry ;  but  that  he  is  versatile  and  active, 
that  he  is  neither  awkward  nor  effeminate,  —  in  a  word,  that  he 
can  live  without  having  a  bell  within  reach,  and  a  servant  within 
sound  of  the  bell."  1 

It  is  especially  in  the  common  school,  by  reason  of  the 
special  destination  of  those  who  attend  it,  that  physical 
education  ought  to  take  a  practical  direction,  and  thus  pre- 
pare boys  for  the  future  occupations  of  the  laborer  and  the 
soldier,  and  girls  for  the  duties  of  the  household  and  for 
the  occupations  peculiar  to  women. 

On  this  point,  the  official  programme  of  French  instruc- 
tion expresses  itself  as  follows  :  — 

"  The  purpose  of  physical  education  is  not  merely  to  fortify  the 
body  and  strengthen  the  constitution  of  the  child,  by  placing  him 
in  the  most  favorable  hygienic  conditions ;  but  it  should  also  give 
him,  at  an  early  hour,  qualities  of  deftness  and  agility,  that  manual 
dexterity  and  th#t  promptness  and  certainty  of  movement  which, 
valuable  for  every  one,  are  more  particularly  necessary  for  pupils 
in  the  common  school,  the  most  of  whom  are  destined  for  manual 
occupations."  2 

26.  PRINCIPLES  OF  PHYSICAL  EDUCATION.  —  It  is  in  the 
education  of  the  body  that  the  greatest  credit  seems  to  have 
been  given  the  notion  that  nature  should  have  her  own  way, 
that  she  should  be  intrusted  exclusively  with  the  care  of 
developing  the  organs  and  regulating  their  functions.  It 
were  a  grave  error  thus  to  hand  over  the  health  and  life  of 
the  child  to  accidents  and  hazards  of  every  species.  Here, 
as  everywhere,  we  must  aid  nature,  and  to  aid  her  we  must 
know  her. 

1  Saint^Marc  Girardin,  J.  J.  ROUSSEAU,  Tome  II.  p.  112. 

9  Programmes  annexed  to  the  official  order  of  July  27,  1882. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  33 

To  be  wholly  rational,  physical  education  should  be  based 
on  a  profound  knowledge  of  the  different  sciences  which 
treat  of  the  human  body.  Hygiene  bases  its  practical  rules 
upon  the  theories  of  physiology ;  gymnastics  is  founded 
upon  the  elementary  principles  of  anatomy  ;  and,  in  general, 
physical  education  applies  the  great  laws  of  the  science  of 
the  body,  just  as  intellectual  and  moral  education  applies 
the  great  laws  of  the  science  to  the  soul. 

27.  PHYSIOLOGY  OF  THE  CHILD.  —  Let  us  add  that  for 
the  body,  as  well  as  for  the  soul,  there  is  an  infancy  —  that 
is   to   say,    a   peculiar   state   of    growth  —  which    precedes 
maturity.     It  is  not,  then,  merely  the  general  physiology 
and  anatomy  of  man  that  the  educator  is  bound  to  consult, 
but,  in  order  to  be  really  fit  to  fulfil  his  task,  he  should 
himself  construct,  as  a  rule  for  his  procedure,  a  real  physi- 
ology of  the  child. 

Like  the  psychology  of  the  child,  his  physiology  is  a 
history  which  accompanies  little  by  little  the  evolution  of 
the  body,  the  successive  formation  of  its  organs,  and  the 
organization  of  the  different  parts  of  the  nervous  system. 
Let  us  not  forget  that  the  child  is  not  a  ready-made 
being,  a  finished  product,  but  a  weak  and  fragile  creature, 
"  whose  muscles,  nerves,  and  organs  are  in  the  milk,  so 
to  speak,"  and  develop  but  gradually,  owing  to  a  slow  but 
incessant  growth. 

28.  IMPORTANCE  OF  PHYSIOLOGICAL  CONCEPTIONS.  —  It  is 
doubtless  to  parents  in  particular  that  falls  the  obligation 
to  know  enough  of  the  laws  of  life  not  to  abandon  the  edu- 
cation of  their  children  to  the  quackery  of  nurses  and  to 
blind  and  irrational  modes  of   treatment.     In  one  of   his 
eloquent  pages  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  reminded  them  of 
their  duties  on  this  point. 


34  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  To  tens  of  thousands  who  are  killed,  add  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands that  survive  with  feeble  constitutions  and  millions  that 
grow  up  with  constitutions  not  so  strong  as  they  should  be,  and 
you  will  have  some  idea  of  the  curse  inflicted  on  their  offspring 
by  parents  ignorant  of  the  laws  of  life.  Do  but  consider  for  a 
moment  that  the  regimen  to  which  children  are  subject  is  hourly 
telling  upon  them  to  their  life-long  injury  or  benefit,  and  that 
there  are  twenty  ways  of  going  wrong  to  one  way  of  going  right, 
and  you  will  get  some  idea  of  the  enormous  mischief  that  is  almost 
everywhere  inflicted  by  the  thoughtless,  haphazard  system  in  com- 
mon use.  Is  it  decided  that  a  boy  shall  be  clothed  in  some  flimsy 
short  dress,  and  be  allowed  to  go  playing  about  with  his  limbs 
reddened  by  cold?  The  decision  will  tell  on  his  whole  future 
existence,  either  in  illness  or  in  stunted  growth,  or  in  deficient 
energy,  or  in  maturity  less  vigorous  than  it  ought  to  have  been, 
and  consequent  hindrances  to  success  and  happiness.  Are  children 
doomed  to  a  monotonous  dietary,  or  a  dietary  deficient  in  nutri- 
tiveness?  Their  ultimate  physical  power,  and  their  efficiency  as 
men  and  women,  will  inevitably  be  more  or  less  diminished  by  it. 
Are  they  forbidden  vociferous  play,  or  (being  too  ill-clothed  to 
bear  exposure)  are  they  left  indoors  in  cold  weather  ?  They  are 
certain  to  fall  below  that  measure  of  health  and  strength  to  which 
they  would  else  have  attained."1 

But  though  the  responsibility  in  this  matter  rests  chiefly 
upon  parents,  teachers  also,  if  they  have  neglected  to  in- 
form themselves  of  the  laws  of  the  physical  life,  if  they 
set  them  at  defiance  by  unreasonable  commands  or  by 
ill-timed  prohibitions,  —  teachers  also  may  exercise  a  fatal 
influence  upon  the  health  and  vitality  of  children.  Then 
let  them  take  a  serious  view  of  their  responsibilities,  and 
study  with  care  anatomy  and  physiology  as  presented  in 
the  normal  schools.  Let  them  supplement  these  studies 
by  their  personal  observations  upon  the  children  of  their 
schools ;  let  them  take  account  of  their  physical  aptitudes, 

1  Spencer,  Education,  pp.  56,  67. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  35 

of  their  differences  in  temperament,  and  of  the  natural 
weakness  or  strength  of  their  constitution.  Thus  prepared 
in  the  lessons  which  they  give  in  gymnastics,  in  their  pre- 
cautions and  advice  in  matters  of  hygiene,  they  will  not  be 
the  mere  routine  adherents  to  a  programme,  but  will  the 
better  execute  the  orders  whose  meaning  and  application 
they  comprehend.  They  will  put  a  liberal  interpretation 
upon  the  dead  letter  of  the  law ;  through  their  personal 
experience,  and  through  then-  enlightened  interest  in  the 
particular  temperament  of  each  child,  they  will  make  this 
letter  a  living  thing. 

29.  POSITIVE  AND  NEGATIVE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  BODY.  — 
Granting  everything  that  can  be  claimed  for  the  natural 
vigor  of  the  child's  constitution  and  of  his  spontaneous 
development,  there  still  remains  a  vast  field  of  activity  open 
to  the  previsions  of  the  educator. 

On  the  one  hand,  the  life  of  the  child  must  be  shielded 
from  everything  which  may  be  the  cause  of  disturbance, 
dissipation,  and  debility,  of  whatever  would  have  a  ten- 
dency to  impair  bodily  health,  such  as  excessive  brain  labor. 
Here,  properly  speaking,  is  the  domain  of  negative  physical 
education,  that  which  consists  in  conserving  and  protecting 
the  natural  forces,  and  which  is  almost  all  summed  up  in 
prohibitions,  in  the  warnings  pronounced  by  hygiene. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  necessary  to  supplement  and 
stimulate  the  work  of  nature,  to  develop  and  fortify  the 
physical  powers ;  and  this  deliberate  intervention  becomes 
more  and  more  necessary,  in  proportion  as  the  intensive 
culture  of  the  intellect  is  carried  to  excess,  and  to  the 
abuses  of  intemperate  study  and  overcrowded  programmes. 
This  will  be  the  purpose  of  a  positive  physical  education, 
of  an  education  which  will  comprise  all  the  exercises  and 
all  the  sports  of  childhood,  all  the  practices  recommended 


36  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

by  hygiene,  and  all  the  movements  which  constitute  gym- 
nastics. 

Hygiene  and  gymnastics,  these  are  the  two  elements  of 
physical  education,  and  both  are  equally  necessary.  The 
first  is,  in  some  sort,  a  good  method  of  conduct,  a  kind  of 
ethics  for  the  body ;  the  other  is  to  physical  activity  what 
study  is  to  intellectual  activity,  a  wholesome  and  strength- 
ening exercise.  Both  conspire  to  endow  the  body  with 
health  and  vigor ;  but  hygiene  has  especial  reference  to 
health,  and  gymnastics  to  vigor. 

30.  SCHOOL  HYGIENE.  — Volumes  have  been  written  upon 
hygiene,  and  we  do  not  propose  to  recite  even  the  essential 
things  which  might  be  said  on  such  a  subject,  either  from 
the  point  of  view  of  school  hygiene  or  of  the  hygiene  of 
children  and  pupils.  On  this  point  we  refer  our  readers 
to  special  treatises.1 

Hygiene,  according  to  Rousseau,  is  not  so  much  "a 
science  as  a  virtue  ;  "  that  is,  it  consists  above  all  in  abstain- 
ing from  whatever  is  bad,  in  shunning  all  excesses,  and  in 
being  temperate  in  all  things.  Temperance  is  the  half  of 
hygiene.  The  child  whose  diet  is  plain,  whose  life  is 
simple,  who  is  spared  every  occasion  for  overtaxing  his 
powers,  who  knows  nothing  of  indigestion,  of  violent  pleas- 
ures and  excessive  fatigues,  —  such  a  child  has  already 
accomplished  much  in  the  way  of  healthful  living. 

1  See  particularly  Lemons  e'le'mentaires  d'hygiene,  by  Dr.  George 
(Paris :  Delalain) ;  I' Hygiene  et  V Education  dans  les  internals,  by 
Riaut ;  L' Instruction  of  July  28,  1882 ;  the  article  Hygiene,  of  Dr.  E. 
Pecaut,  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  pe'dagogie;  lastly,  the  Rapports  of  the 
Commission  on  School  Hygiene,  Paris,  1884. 

The  English  reader  is  referred  to  the  following  books :  Charles 
Kingsley,  Health  and  Education;  Archibald  Maclaren,  A  System  of 
Physical  Education;  D.  F.  Lincoln,  School  and  Industrial  Hygiene. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  37 

However,  hygiene  permits  a  certain  number  of  positive 
injunctions  which  relate  either  to  the  general  cleanliness 
of  the  body,  to  diet,  or  to  clothing.  The  common  principle 
of  all  these  injunctions  ought  to  be  not -to  yield  too  much 
to  the  inclinations  of  nature,  nor  yet  to  interfere  with  her 
too  much. 

31.  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  PHYSICAL  HARDENING. —  Such, 
however,  is  not  the  opinion  of  a  certain  number  of  educators 
who,  like  Locke  for  example,  give  a  much  greater  extension 
to  the  principle  of  physical  hardening,  and  who,  under  the 
pretext  of  not  spoiling  nature  by  an  excess  of  mildness  and 
complacency,  end  by  refusing  her  the  most  legitimate  grati- 
fications. It  is  doubtless  well  to  inure  children  to  hard- 
ships, not  to  enervate  them,  but  to  bring  them  up  in  country 
fashion.  However,  we  should  always  take  into  account  the 
diversity  of  temperaments. 

"  If  your  son  is  very  robust,"  said  Madame  de  Sevigne  shrewdly, 
"  a  rude  education  is  good ;  but  if  he  is  delicate,  I  think  that  in 
your  attempts  to  make  him  robust  you  would  kill  him." 

And  even  the  most  robust  constitutions  cannot  be  sub- 
jected to  all  trials.  Locke  is  wrong  when  he  forbids  warm 
clothing  in  winter.  Herbert  Spencer  is  wiser  on  this  point, 
when,  in  the  clothing  of  children,  he  would  take  account  of 
the  natural  sensations  of  heat  and  cold. 

"  The  common  notion  about '  hardening,'  "  he  says,  "  is  a  griev- 
ous delusion.  Children  are  not  unfrequently  'hardened'  out  of 
the  world." 

It  is  chimerical  to  suppose  that  by  forced  modes  of  pro- 
cedure and  by  habits  early  acquired,  we  can  accomplish 
everything  through  the  plasticity  of  the  physical  organs. 
There  are  things  contrary  to  our  physical  constitution,  to 
which  the  organism  cannot  become  accustomed.  This  is 


38  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

what  Goldsmith   tried  to   illustrate  when   he  related  this 
anecdote : 

"  One  day  Peter  the  Great  took  it  into  his  head  that  it  would 
be  best  for  all  sailors  to  form  the  habit  of  drinking  salt  water. 
He  immediately  promulgated  an  order  that  all  naval  cadets  should 
henceforth  drink  only  sea-water.  The  boys  all  died,  and  there 
the  experiment  stopped." 

Then  let  us  be  wise  enough  to  give  sufficient  place  to 
the  requirements  of  nature,  and  not  revert  to  the  old  ascetic 
tendencies  which  led  to  dangerous  deprivations  and  hard- 
ships ;  but  let  us  be  equally  on  our  guard  against  paying 
homage  to  the  optimism,  as  unwise  as  it  is  seductive,  of 
those  who,  like  Herbert  Spencer,  assert  that  it  is  necessary 
in  everything  to  revere  the  sacred  order  of  nature  and 
satisfy  all  the  desires  of  the  child,  as  for  example  his 
immoderate  appetite  for  sweetmeats. 

32.  CLEANLINESS.  —  Cleanliness  is  a  virtue,  according  to 
Volney  ;  a  half  virtue,  according  to  others.  What  admits 
of  no  doubt  is  that  the  opposite  of  cleanliness  is  a  great 
fault,  since  it  compromises  the  dignity  of  the  human  person 
by  giving  an  offensive  appearance  to  the  body.  "  There 
is  a  closer  relation  than  we  think,"  said  Madame  Pape- 
Carpantier,  "  between  physical  cleanliness  and  moral 
purity." 

But  cleanliness  is  valuable  in  itself,  as  a  hygienic  rule, 
as  an  element  of  health,  and  as  a  preventive  of  contagions 
which  give  rise  to  diseases,  light  or  severe. 

Hence  the  importance  of  giving  attention  to  cleanliness. 
It  rests  chiefly  with  the  family  to  insist  on  its  observance ; 
but  by  his  advice,  by  his  example,  and  also  by  the  attention 
which  he  gives  to  the  subject,  the  teacher  can  do  much  to- 
wards giving  the  child  habits  of  cleanliness. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  39 

33.  FOOD  AND  CLOTHING.  —  Without  saying,  with  Feuer- 
bach,  that  "man  is  what  he  eats,"  and  without  accepting 
the  absolute  assertion  of  Herbert  Spencer,  that  "the  well- 
fed  races  have  been  the  energetic  and  dominant  races,"  we 
cannot  accord  too  much  importance  to  alimentation,  to  the 
quality  and  the  quantity  of  food. 

Mr.  Spencer  declares  that  there  are  too  many  rules  in 
the  nursery,  just  as  there  are  too  many  in  the  state,  and 
that  one  of  the  greatest  evils  resulting  from  this  state  of 
things  is  that  children  are  too  much  restricted  in  their  diet. 
"The  food  of  children,"  he  says,  "should  be  highly  nutri- 
tive ;  it  should  be  varied  at  each  meal ;  and  it  should  be 
abundant."1 

The  child,  then,  should  eat  till  his  hunger  is  satisfied. 
Eating  to  excess  is  the  vice  of  adults  rather  than  of  children. 
Indigestion,  with  children,  is  almost  always  brought  on  by 
a  reaction  against  privations,  against  a  prolonged  fast. 

As  to  garments,  they  should  be  full  and  loose,  so  that 
the  body  shall  feel  at  ease  in  them,  and  that  nothing  shall 
interfere  with  the  functions  of  the  organism.  "  Hygienists 
condemn  the  premature  use  of  the  corset  for  girls,  and  at 
all  times  the  tunic  for  boys."  2 

Locke,  with  his  usual  austerity,  required  the  child  to 
play  bareheaded,  and  never  to  wear  warm  clothing  ;  he  even 
favored  the  idea  of  requiring  him  to  wear  the  same  garments 
winter  and  summer.  Mr.  Spencer,  on  the  contrary,  finds 
that  it  is  folly  to  clothe  children  in  thin  garments.  The 
French  criticise  the  English  custom  of  allowing  children 
to  go  bare-legged  and  thinly  dressed ;  while  the  English 
blame  the  French  for  the  silly  things  invented  by  the 
Petit  Courrier  des  dames,  which  recommends  garments  that 

1  Education,  p.  224. 

a  See  Fonssagrives,  Education  physique  des  gar$ons,  p.  57. 


40  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

are  either  inconvenient  or  insufficient.1  Mr.  Spencer  con- 
cludes that  if  clothing  should  not  be  so  heavy  as  to  produce 
an  uncomfortable  warmth,  it  ought  always  to  be  warm 
enough  to  prevent  all  feeling  of  cold. 

34.  OTHER  HYGIENIC  REQUIREMENTS. — We  are  far  from 
having  enumerated  all  the  precepts  of  hygiene ;  there  are 
others  bearing  on  sleep,  on  work,  on  recreations,  and  upon 
punishments.      Hygiene   particularly   recommends   physical 
activity  as  a  means  of  counterbalancing  cerebral  toil  and 
intellectual  fatigue.     Activity  is  one  of  the  conditions  of 
health.    We  are  nourished,  not  by  what  we  eat,  but  by  what 
we  digest,  as  a  physician  has  told  us  ;  and  Trousseau  adds, 
"  We  digest  with  our  limbs  as  well  as  with  our  stomach." 

But  at  this  point  hygiene  is  almost  confounded  with  gym- 
nastics, of  which  we  now  proceed  to  speak. 

35.  GYMNASTICS. —  Generally    too    much    neglected    in 
France,  but  holding  a  prominent  place  in  Switzerland  and 
Germany,  gymnastics   begins  to   affect   the  habits  of   our 
schools.2    French   legislation   has  ordained  it,  and  official 
manuals  have  codified  its  requirements.8 

1  See  Spencer,  Education,  p.  250. 

2  The  law  of  March  15, 1850,  placed  the  teaching  of  gymnastics  among 
the  optional  studies  of  primary  instruction.    The  decree  of  March  24, 
1851,  included  it  among  the  obligatory  studies  of  the  normal  schools. 
The  decree  of  March  13,  1854,  introduced  it  into  the  lycees.    A  decree 
of  1869  (Feb.  3)  organized  it  in  the  lycees  and  colleges,  in  the  normal 
schools,  and  in  the  primary  schools.    Numerous  circulars  published 
since  that  period  have  given  precise  instructions  and  detailed  precepts. 
Finally,  the  law  of  January  27,  1880,  makes  obligatory  the  teaching  of 
gymnastics  "  in  all  the  institutions  of  public  instruction  for  boys ; " 
and  the  decree  of  July  27,  1881,  says  expressly  that  ".each  day,  or  at 
least  every  other  day,  gymnastics  shall  occupy  a  recitation  hour  dur- 
ing the  course  of  the  afternoon." 

8  See  the  Manual  of  Captain  Vergnes. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  41 

This  system  is  being  gradually  organized,  and  if  it  does  not 
always  command  competent  instructors,  it  at  least  responds 
everywhere  to  the  wishes  of  pupils. 

But  let  us  be  on  our  guard  lest  this  taste  become  an 
infatuation.  When  the  educator  has  made  many  efforts 
to  introduce  a  new  subject  into  education,  and  has  at  last 
been  successful,  his  part  changes ;  most  often  he  has  to 
repress  excesses  of  zeal,  and  to  maintain  within  just  limits 
that  very  branch  of  instruction  which  he  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  introducing.  All  the  sciences,  all  the  arts, 
whatever  they  may  be,  are  in  their  very  nature  encroaching, 
once  the  doors  of  the  school  have  been  opened  to  them. 
They  are  but  means,  but  they  are  disposed  to  make  them- 
selves accepted  as  ends.  In  the  French  colleges  the  study 
of  Latin,  which  should  be  but  one  of  the  modes  of  intel- 
lectual culture  through  the  use  of  a  foreign  language,  has 
become  the  supreme  end  of  education,  and  there  is  no  longer 
any  other  thought  than  to  make  latinists.1  Let  it  not  be 
so  with  gymnastics,  whose  purpose  is  not  to  make  gymnasts, 
prodigies  of  strength  and  agility,  but  simply  to  give  power 
and  suppleness  to  the  muscles ;  to  govern  and  facilitate  the 
play  of  tfce  bodily  movements ;  to  assure  to  laborers  vigor- 
ous limbs,  good  corporeal  tools ;  to  prepare  for  all  men 

1  It  is  worthy  of  note,  in  passing,  that  teachers  often  misconceive 
the  destination  of  their  pupils.  In  particular  this  mistake  is  made  by 
specialists,  as  in  the  classics  and  the  sciences,  who  proceed  on  the 
hypothesis  that  all  their  pupils  are  to  become  specialists,  —  philolo- 
gists or  naturalists.  In  such  cases  the  presumption  is  set  up  that 
the  sciences  must  be  rediscovered.  The  story  of  Agassiz  and  the 
student  with  the  fish,  so  often  quoted  to  illustrate  the  true  method 
of  teaching  science,  does  not  represent  the  average  pupil,  who  needs 
to  learn  science  chiefly  for  the  same  reason  that  he  learns  history, 
for  the  sake  of  general  information.  This  subject  is  discussed  at 
some  length  in  Contributions  to  the  Science  of  Education,  Chap.  III. 


42  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

the  elements  of  a  robust  health  and  a  long  life  ;  and,  finally, 
to  develope  the  physical  energies,  just  as  study  developes 
the  moral  energies. 

Doubtless  gymnastics  has  need  of  apparatus  and  rigging, 
and  for  the  moment  this  is  one  of  the  difficulties  which 
retard  its  introduction  into  village  schools ;  but  let  it  be 
as  far  as  possible  independent  of  these  aids,  or  at  least 
let  it  not  abuse  them.  Let  there  be  no  machines  that  are 
too  complicated,  no  contrivances  that  are  too  scientific. 
The  report  of  the  special  commission  appointed  in  1868 
had  the  prudence  to  condemn  ' '  exercises  which  demand 
too  great  an  expenditure  of  strength,  and  which  might  be 
the  cause  of  accidents."  So  let  us  proscribe  all  the  nice- 
ties, all  the  refinements,  which  would  end  in  transforming 
the  lesson  in  gymnastics  into  a  training  of  jugglers  or  of 
adepts  in  feats  of  strength,  —  in  a  word,  all  the  exercises 
which  do  not  have  the  single  purpose  of  giving  the  child 
a  body  fit  for  action  and  able  to  resist  fatigue. 

36.  OTHER  RESULTS  OF  GYMNASTICS. — But  gymnastics 
has  not  physical  development  solely  in  view. 

A, shrewd  observer  of  children,  Mademoiselle  Chalamet, 
has  remarked  that  gymnastics  also  proposes,  "  (1)  to  disci- 
pline the  child ;  and  (2)  to  afford  him  repose  from  intellec- 
tual labor,  and,  by  this  very  means,  to  make  the  resumption 
of  it  more  easy  and  more  profitable."1 

Gymnastics,  in  fact,  by  regulating  the  movements  of 
the  body,  by  imposing  regular  and  rhythmical  evolutions, 
by  requiring  exact  movements,  executed  with  precision  and 
promptness, — gymnastics  communicates  habits  of  order  and 
decision,  whose  effect  survives  the  exercises  which  have 
produced  them,  and  which,  by  a  sort  of  inner  contagion, 
are  even  transmitted  to  the  soul.  This  result  would  cer- 

1  Mademoiselle  Chalamet,  L'Ecole  materndle,  p.  276. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  43 

tainly  be  attained  if  the  evolutions  of  pupils  were  to  be 
accompanied  by  songs,  as  recommended  by  Amoras,  who 
introduced  gymnastics  into  France.1 

On  the  other  hand,  gymnastics  does  not  labor  merely  for 
the  future  by  enlarging  and  strengthening  the  chest,  by 
giving  suppleness  to  the  limbs,  and  by  contributing  to 
the  health  of  the  child.  It  also  acts  immediately  upon  the 
state  of  the  body,  whose  forces  it  renews,  and  upon  the 
nervous  system,  which  it  tempers ;  it  has  a  happy  effect 
upon  studies,  because  it  re-establishes  the  equilibrium  in 
the  organism,  and  at  the  same  time  gives  the  mind  more 
vigor  and  elasticity.  Gymnastics,  like  play,  takes  the  child 
weary,  enervated  by  study  and  cerebral  effort,  and  restores 
him  to  intellectual  labor  refreshed  and  active.  But  it  will 
do  this  on  one  condition,  that  we  never  pass  the  limit 
beyond  which  fatigue  would  begin.  An  excessive  exercise 
of  the  body  makes  the  mind  inert,  while  moderate  exercise 
reanimates  and  refreshes  it.  Especially  in  our  day,  when 
an  over-crowded  programme  subjects  the  child  to  severe 
intellectual  efforts,  when  "  a  system  of  high-pressure  educa- 
tion," as  Mr.  Spencer  says,  requires  excessive  application, 
an  alternation  of  physical  and  mental  exercises  becomes 
more  and  more  necessary  in  order  to  re-establish  and  renew 
without  cessation  the  forces  which  the  abuse  of  mental 
labor  is  not  slow  to  exhaust. 

37.  MILITARY  GYMNASTICS.  —  It  is  not  only  in  our  day, 
as  one  might  suppose,  that  men  have  thought  of  exercising 
children  in  the  handling  of  arms. 

1  In  the  Rapport  of  Dr.  Javal,  Sur  I'Hygiene  des  tcoles  primaires 
(Paris:  1884),  we  find  the  following  precept:  Children  must  be  pre- 
vented from  singing  during  violent  gymnastic  exercises  and  while 
running.  But  evidently  this  prohibition  does  not  apply  to  elementary 
exercises,  to  rounds,  and  to  evolutions. 


44  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  I  saw  yesterday,"  wrote  Madame  de  Sevigne,  "  a  little  boy 
whom  I  found  to  be  a  fine  fellow.  He  is  seven  years  old,  and  his 
father  has  taught  him  to  handle  the  musket  and  the  pike.  It  is 
the  finest  thing  in  the  world.  You  would  love  that  little  child. 
This  exercise  limbers  his  body  and  makes  him  deliberate,  dex- 
terous, and  resolute.  To  my  mind,  this  is  better  than  a  dancingr 
master." 

It  is  needless  to  insist  on  the  utility  of  military  gymnas- 
tics, which  is  a  preparation  for  the  duties  of  citizenship 
and  an  apprenticeship  in  the  habits  of  a  soldier,  at  the 
same  time  that  it  offers  most  of  the  advantages  which  can 
be  obtained  from  the  practice  of  ordinary  gymnastics.  It 
is  sufficient  to  call  to  mind  the  place  which  military  drill 
has  long  held  in  the  schools  of  Germany. 

38.  GYMNASTICS  FOR  GIRLS. — We  must  not  conclude  from 
the  fact  that  the  law  of  1880  is  content  with  imposing  upon 
boys  the  obligation  to  receive  instruction  in  gymnastics, 
that  such  instruction  is  not  adapted  to  girls. 

"Women,"  said  Monsieur  Laisne,  "have  need  of  gymnastics 
even  more  than  men  ;  for  in  their  case  the  obstacles  which  civilized 
life  opposes  to  physical  development  are  much  more  numerous 
and  even  much  more  fatal."1 

Herbert  Spencer  vigorously  combats  the  prejudice  which 
excludes  girls  from  physical  exercises.  He  conceives  for 
them  an  education  as  boisterous  and  as  active  as  that  of 
their  brothers.  He  even  urges  them  to  violent  sports  and 
to  long  walks,  to  whatever  can  produce. in  them  a  robust 
physical  development.  He  would  have  them  run  like  mad- 
caps and  grow  up  amid  gambols  and  rude  sports.  There 
is  no  fear,  he  adds,  that  this  will  afterwards  affect  the 
delicacy  and  grace  of  their  manners. 

1  Laisne,  Gymnastique  pratique,  Preface,  p.  13. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  45 

"  If  the  sportive  activity  allowed  to  boys  does  not  prevent  them 
from  growing  up  into  gentlemen,  why  should  a  like  sportive 
activity  allowed  to  girls  prevent  them  from  growing  up  into 
ladies?  Rough  as  may  have  been  their  accustomed  playground 
frolics,  youths  who  have  left  school  do  not  indulge  in  leap-frog  in 
the  street  or  marbles  in  the  drawing-room."  1 

Doubtless  it  is  unnecessary  to  subject  the  two  sexes  to 
the  same  regime.  Plato  and  some  utopists  of  the  French 
Revolution  are  the  only  ones  who  could  dream,  in  their 
passion  for  equality,  of  an  education  absolutely  the  same, 
in  which  girls  should  be  dressed  like  boys,  and,  like  them, 
should  mount  horse  and  bear  arms.  No ;  nature  requires 
that  we  take  into  account  the  difference  which  she  has 
established  in  physical  constitution  as  in  social  destination. 
There  should  be  special  programmes  and  distinct  manuals 
of  gymnastics  for  the  two  sexes.  Certainly  there  should 
not  be  required  of  women  the  prolonged  running,  the  violent 
leaps,  and  the  feats  of  strength,  —  any  of  those  exercises,  in 
a  word, —  which  are  befitting  only  to  the  muscular  strength 
of  men.  "We  must  ever  keep  in  mind  with  what  a  delicate 
and  frail  being  we  have  to  do. 

But  with  these  reservations,  it  is  safe  to  say  that,  at 
least  in  towns,  young  women  need  to  be  subjected  to 
gymnastic  discipline. 

"  The  boy  always  finds  a  means  of  escaping  somewhat  from  the 
influence  of  bad  lodging  and  an  unwholesome  mode  of  life.  He 
is  out  of  doors,  walks  the  streets,  idles  about  town,  lives  much  in 
the  open  air.  But  the  girl,  on  the  contrary,  is  sedentary,  remains 
within  doors,  escapes  no  restraint.  The  direct  consequence  of 
this  is  a  greater  debility,  which  can  be  repaired  only  by  more 
energetic  and  more  assiduous  care.  What  physician  in  the  poorer 
quarters  of  cities  has  not  been  painfully  struck  by  that  muscular 
feebleness,  by  that  nervous  debility,  and  by  that  impoverishment 

1  Education,  p.  226. 


46  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

of  the  blood  which  characterize  the  young  women  of  the  lower 
classes,  and  make  of  them,  at  a  late  period,  the  victims  of  grave 
nervous  disorders,  or  at  least  women  rarely  capable  of  sustaining 
with  impunity  the  fatigues  of  maternity  ?  "  1 

39.  OFFICIAL  PROGRAMMES.  —  It  has  not  been  thought 
sufficient  to  recommend  gymnastic  exercises,  or  even  to 
impose  them  by  law ;  the  programme  of  this  new  instruction 
has  recently  been  prepared.  Already,  in  1872,  in  the 
schools  of  Paris,  instruction  in  gymnastics  had  been  organ- 
ized according  to  a  regular  plan. 

"  The  lessons,  based  on  the  elementary  principles  of  general 
anatomy,  comprise  exercises  in  walking,  simple  movements,  move- 
ments combined  with  the  xylofer,2  the  handling  of  dumb-bells, 
jumping,  and,  for  the  oldest  pupils,  parallel  bars  and  the 
ladder.  All  the  movements  are  accompanied  by  an  easy  and 
pleasing  song,  which  helps  to  strengthen  the  muscles  of  the 
respiratory  organs."8 

We  now  present  the  text  of  the  official  programme  estab- 
lished in  1882:- 

INFANT  CLASS.  —  Plays,  rounds,  evolutions,  rhythmic  move- 
ments, the  little  games  of  Madame  Pape-Carpantier.  Graduated 
exercises. 

ELEMENTARY  COURSE.  —  Preparatory  exercises,  movements  and 
flexions  of  the  arms  and  legs.  Use  of  the  dumb-bells  and  bar. 
Cadenced  running.  Evolutions. 

INTERMEDIATE  COURSE.  —  Continuation  of  the  exercises  in  the 
flexion  and  extension  of  the  arms  and  legs.  Practice  with  dumb- 
bells. Exercises  with  the  bar,  rings,  ladder,  knotted  cord,  sus- 
pended bars,  fixed  horizontal  beam,  the  pole,  the  trapeze.  Evolu- 
tions. 

1  Revue  pfdagogique,  Nov.  25,  1882,  article  by  M.  E.  Pecaut. 

2  An  instrument  recommended  by  Dr.  Tissot  in  1870,  constructed 
by  Laisne  in  1873,  whose  purpose  is  to  expand  and  develop  the  chests 
of  children. 

8  M.  Greard,  L'Enseignement  primaire  a  Paris,  p.  113. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  47 

HIGHER  COURSE.  —  Continuation  of  the  same  exercises.  Ex- 
ercises in  equilibrium  upon  one  foot.  Arm  movements,  combined 
with  walking.  Exercises  two  and  two  with  the  bar.  Races, 
jumping.  Cane  exercise  (for  boys). 

40.  PLAT  AND  GYMNASTICS.  — As  it  has  been  justly  said, 
gymnastics,  understood  as  a  science  of  movements,  as  a 
systematic  and  exact  art  of  physical  exercises,  —  gymnas- 
tics, when  introduced  into  the  school,  is  but  an  additional 
lesson  there.  Now  it  is  particularly  of  physical  activity 
that  it  is  true  to  say  that,  in  order  to  attain  its  purpose, 
it  ought  to  be  agreeable,  to  please  the  child,  to  conform  to 
his  tastes.  If  pleasure  does  not  attend  them,  physical 
exercises  will  not  have  the  salutary  effect  that  is  expected 
of  them.  From  this  point  of  view,  the  monotonous,  artifi- 
cial, and  unnatural  movements  of  gymnastics  are  certainly 
not  worth  the  free  and  joyous  effort  that  comes  from 
activity  in  play. 

"  The  truth  is,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "  that  happiness  is  the  most 
powerful  of  tonics.  By  accelerating  the  circulation  of  the  blood, 
it  facilitates  the  performance  of  every  function,  and  so  tends 
alike  to  increase  health  when  it  exists,  and  to  restore  It  when  it 
has  been  lost.  Hence  the  essential  superiority  of  play  to 
gymnastics." l 

In  pursuing  his  formal  strictures  against  gymnastics, 
which  "  must  be  radically  defective  as  not  supplying  these 
agreeable  mental  stimuli,"  the  English  educator  remarks 
that  it  has  still  another  fault ;  the  prescribed  movements 
which  it  imposes,  necessarily  less  diversified  than  the  move- 
ments which  result  from  free  exercises,  develop  but  a  part 
of  the  muscular  system,  exercise  only  particular  organs,  and 
consequently  do  not  produce  an  equal  distribution  of  activity 
among  all  parts  of  the  body. 

1  Education,  pp.  257,  268. 


48  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

The  legitimate  preference  which  Mr.  Spencer  accords  to 
play,  to  the  spontaneous  activity  of  the  child,  almost  neces- 
sarily leads  him  to  the  extreme  and  false  conclusion  that 
gymnastics  is  a  bad  thing,  and  that  it  can  be  accepted  at 
best  only  as  a  make-shift,  —  "  formal  exercises  of  the  limbs 
are  better  than  nothing." 

"We  are  far  from  sharing  this  opinion,  and  it  seems  to 
us  that  Laisne  was  more  just  in  his  appreciation  when  he 
wrote  : 

"Ordinary  sports,  with  their  inconveniences,  disordered  and 
unsystematic,  cannot  replace  gymnastics ;  but,  conversely,  gym- 
nastics, regular  and  systematic  as  it  is,  ought  not  to  supersede 
play  where  all  children  abandon  themselves  to  the  frolics  of  their 
age." 

41.  NECESSITY  OF  PLAY. — This  is  not  the  place  to  dis- 
cuss exhaustively  the  question  of  sports.  In  fact,  sports 
do  not  affect  physical  education  alone ;  they  have  intimate 
relations  with  the  culture  of  the  imagination  and  with 
aesthetic  education,  and  we  shall  have  occasion  to  return 
to  the  subject. 

But  it  is  well  to  state  before  going  further  how  important 
it  is,  from  a  sanitary  point  of  view,  that  the  child  should 
play,  and  how  much  it  were  to  be  regretted  should  the 
habit  of  playing  disappear  from  our  schools,  as  it  tends, 
alas !  to  disappear  from  social  life. 

"  Play  in  the  open  air,  which  invites  to  jump,  to  run  without 
interruption,  to  shout  at  the  top  of  the  voice,  which  causes  the 
blood  to  circulate  vigorously,  and  gives  color  to  the  cheeks,  —  this 
is  the  agent  of  all  others  for  physical  development.  The  English 
and  the  Americans  well  know  this,  and  with  them  play  is  a 
national  institution." 

The  French,  on  the  contrary,  play  less  and  less,  and  the 
fault  is  due  in  part  to  the  habits  contracted  in  the  colleges, 


PHYSICAL  EDUCATION.  49 

and  also  in  part  to  the  teachers,  who,  in  general,  have 
disparaged  sports  too  much,  — ' '  those  nothings  which  are 
everything  in  the  life  of  a  child."  Froebel  is  almost  the 
only  one  who  has  given  that  attention  to  the  subject  which 
it  merits. 

"  We  should  not  consider  play,"  he  says,  "  as  a  frivolous  thing ; 

on  the  contrary,  it  is  a  thing  of  profound  significance By 

means  of  play  the  child  expands  in  joy  as  the  flower  expands  when 
it  proceeds  from  the  bud ;  for  joy  is  the  soul  of  all  the  actions  of 
that  age." 

42.  PHYSICAL  EXERCISES  IN  ENGLAND. — Physical  educa- 
tion still  counts  so  many  adverse  critics  among  the  French 
that  it  is  not  useless  to  invoke  the  example  of  foreign 
nations.  No  one  will  deny  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  race 
stands  in  the  front  rank  among  the  human  races,  and  it 
owes  its  superiority  in  part  to  its  taste  for  physical  exer- 
cises. 

On  this  point  let  us  quote  the  testimony  of  an  acute 
observer,  M.  Taine.1 

"There  are  gentlemen  in  England,"  he  says,  "whose  ambition 
and  training  are  those  of  a  Greek  athlete.  They  restrict  them- 
selves to  a  particular  diet,  abstaining  from  every  excess  in  food 
and  drink.  They  develop  their  muscles  and  subject  themselves 

to  a  rational  system  of  training 

"  Sports  hold  the  first  place,  said  an  Eton  master,  and  books  the 
second.  A  boy  stakes  his  reputation  on  being  a  good  athlete. 
He  spends  three,  four,  five  hours  a  day  in  boisterous  and  violent 
exercise.  He  will  splash  about  for  hours  in  ploughed  fields  and 
miry  meadows,  falling  into  the  mud,  losing  his  shoes,  and  pulling 

himself  out  as  best  he  can The  university  continues  the 

school,  and  in  it  there  reigns  an  active,  popular,  almost  universal 
taste  for  athletic  exercises.  Playing  at  cricket,  rowing,  sailing, 

1  M.  Taine,  Notes  aur  I'Engleterre,  Paris,  1872,  Chap.  IV.,  L'Educ*- 
tion. 


50  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

training  dogs  to  hunt  rats,  fishing,  hunting,  riding  on  horseback, 
coaching,  swimming,  boxing,  fencing,  and  recently  amateur  sol- 
diering, —  these  are  the  most  interesting  occupations  for  the 

young  men Doubtless  muscular  training  carried  to  such 

an  extent  entails  some  rudeness  in  manners ;  but,  by  way  of  com- 
pensation, this  athletic  and  gymnastic  discipline  has  this  double 
advantage,  that  it  chills  the  senses  and  calms  the  imagination. 
Moreover,  when  the  moral  and  mental  life  is  afterwards  developed, 
the  soul  finds,  to  support  it,  a  more  healthy  and  a  more  substan- 
tial body." 

We  do  not  desire,  any  more  than  M.  Taine  does,  to 
disguise  the  faults  which  this  extreme  attention  to  the 
physical  life,  this  mania  for  muscularity,  is  likely  to  en- 
gender. Plato,  two  thousand  years  ago,  drew  the  portrait, 
but  little  flattering,  of  the  man  who  trains  only  his  body, 
"who  lives  in  ignorance  and  awkwardness,  with  no  sym- 
metry and  no  grace."1  English  education  must  often  end 
in  producing  coarse  natures,  dolts ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  hardens  the  body  and  tempers  character. 

43.  CONCLUSION.  —  It  is  only  till  lately  that  the  theory 
and  the  practice  of  education  have  given  to  physical  exer- 
cises their  proper  place ;  and  already,  in  presence  of  the 
progress,  still  uncertain,  of  gymnastics,  some  minds  have 
taken  the  alarm.  It  is  to  be  feared,  some  say,  that  the 
new  generations  may  be  ' '  trained  to  passive  obedience 
through  the  development  of  physical  exercises."  It  is  even 
said  that  education,  thus  conducted,  lowers  man  towards 
the  level  of  the  beast.2  This  is  surely  misplaced  zeal  to 
hurl  anathemas  against  a  thing  the  most  innocent  and  the 
most  legitimate  in  the  world,  the  development  of  physical 
power.  If  it  were  necessary  to  choose  between  mind  and 

1  Republic,  411. 

2  See  the  Lent  Sermon  of  the  Bishop  of  Versailles,  1885. 


PHYSICAL   EDUCATION.  51 

gymnastics,  we  would  freely  exclaim,  Long  live  mind ! 
Down  with  gymnastics !  But  surely  there  is  no  need  of 
such  a  choice.  The  mind  can  derive  only  good  from  a 
moderate  exercise  of  the  body.  As  to  saying  that  the  habit 
of  passive  obedience  will  be  the  result  of  this  new  taste 
for  physical  discipline,  it  is  to  forget  that  well-worn  truth 
that  a  man  is  so  much  the  more  free,  so  much  the  more 
independent,  as  he  has  more  power  at  his  disposal.  "We 
have  never  observed  that  in  the  religious  orders,  where 
passive  obedience  is  most  strongly  recommended,  and  where 
the  maxim  perinde  ac  cadaver  has  reigned,  much  attention 
has  been  given  to  physical  development.  In  such  cases 
asceticism  has  flourished,  not  gymnastics. 


CHAPTER    III. 

INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  —  GENERAL   PRINCIPLES. 

44.  Is   THERE    AN   INTELLECTUAL    EDUCATION? It   IS   Still 

the  general  usage  to  reserve  the  word  education  to  designate 
the  formation  of  morals  and  character.  The  precise  object 
of  education  proper,  in  distinction  from  instruction,  is  the 
culture  of  the  will  and  the  heart,  as  opposed  to  that  of  the 
intelligence.1  There  is,  however,  an  intellectual  education, 
but  it  is  something  more  than  instruction,  though  it  includes 
it  and  depends  in  great  part  upon  it. 

"The  mind,"  said  Locke,  "is  the  principal  part  of 
human  nature,  and  education  ought  to  bear  chiefly  upon 
what  is  within  man."  It  cannot  be  doubted,  in  fact,  that 
the  intelligence  and  the  interior  faculties  are,  still  more  than 
the  physical  faculties,  the  object  of  education,  either  by  rea- 
son of  the  dignity  of  thought,  — ' '  for  it  is  from  this  source 
that  we  must  gain  the  power  to  rise," — or  because,  nature 
and  instinct  playing  a  less  important  part  in  mental  develop- 
ment, the  intervention  of  the  educator  is  here  particularly 
necessary. 

45.  RELATION  OF  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION  TO  PHYSICAL 
AND  MORAL  EDUCATION.  —  Intellectual  education  is  by  no 

1  H.  Marion,  Lemons  de  psychologic,  p.  49.  The  meaning  of  this 
term  is  not  so  restricted  by  English  writers,  who  apply  it  in  the  same 
sense  to  body,  mind,  and  character ;  though  the  essential  idea  in  each 
case  is  that  of  discipline  or  formation,  rather  than  of  instruction  or 
information.  (P.) 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  53 

means  an  isolated  thing,  separated  from  all  the  rest.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  but  a  fragment  of  the  general  education 
of  man,  having  intimate  relations  with  physical  education, 
and  also  with  moral  education. 

When  science  shall  have  succeeded  in  solving  the  ques- 
tion, still  obscure,  of  the  relations  between  the  physical  and 
the  moral,  between  brain  and  thought,  the  influence  of  the 
education  of  the  body  upon  the  education  of  the  mind  will 
become  generally  apparent.  But  even  now,  it  is  sufficient  to 
have  observed  children  to  be  convinced  that  their  intellectual 
evolution  corresponds  to  their  state  of  health,  to  the  nature 
of  their  temperament,  to  then:  strength,  or  to  their  weakness 
of  body. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  notwithstanding  the  clamorous 
assertions  of  Herbert  Spencer,  with  respect  to  the  impotency 
of  instruction  and  its  moral  sterility,  it  is  evident  that  the 
education -of  the  mind  is  a  preparation  for  that  of  the  heart 
and  the  character,  and  that  there  is  an  element  of  truth 
in  the  old  Socratic  maxim,  ' '  Knowledge  and  virtue  are 
one." l 

46.  DEFINITION  OP  INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION.  —  Every- 
thing which  contributes  to  making  the  mind  active,  to 
developing,  strengthening,  and  training  it,  and  also  to  en- 
lightening and  ornamenting  it,  forms  a  part  of  intellec- 
tual education.  But  there  is  an  important  distinction  to 
be  made :  it  is  one  thing  to  build  a  house,  and  another 
thing  to  furnish  it.2  And  so,  with  respect  to  the  intelli- 
gence, it  is  one  thing  to  cultivate  it  for  itself,  by  developing 

1  See  Compayre,  History  of  Pedagogy,  p.  380. 

2  A  very  true  statement  of  the  case  will  be  made,  if  we  say  that 
the  purpose  of  intellectual  education  is  to  train  or  discipline  the  mind 
and  to  furnish  it,  and  that  this  furnishing  is  to  serve  two  purposes, 
use  and  enjoyment.    (P.) 


54  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

its  faculties,  and  another  thing  to  furnish  it  with  the  knowl- 
edges which  constitute  either  the  elements  of  wisdom  or  real 
science. 

Then  we  shall  not  confound  instruction  proper,  the  study 
of  whatever  must  be  learned  and  known,  with  the  general 
culture  of  the  intelligence,  the  educative  effort  by  virtue  of 
which  the  child  leaves  school  not  only  instructed,  but  ca- 
pable of  carrying  forward  his  own  instruction ;  teachable, 
furnished  with  strong  and  pliant  faculties,  with  an  agile 
and  firm  memory,  with  accurate  judgment,  and  with  the 
power  of  exact  reasoning. 

"  Education,"  says  Dupanloup,  "  consists  essentially  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  human  faculties. 

"  If  the  care  of  the  master  and  the  efforts  of  the  pupil  do  not 
result  in  developing,  extending,  elevating,  and  strengthening  the 
faculties ;  if  they  are  limited,  for  example,  to  providing  the  mind 
with  certain  knowledges,  and,  if  I  dare  say  it,  to  stpring  them 
away  there  without  adding  to  its  breadth,  its  power,  and  its  nat- 
ural activity,  education  will  not  have  taken  place ;  there  will  be 
nothing  but  instruction.  I  would  no  longer  recognize  in  this  proc- 
ess that  grand  and  beautiful  creative  work  which  is  called  educa- 
tion, educare.  The  child  might  be,  strictly  speaking,  instructed, 
but  he  would  not  be  educated.  Even  the  education  of  the  intel- 
lect would  be  imperfect. 

"In  this  there  would  be  at  most  only  an  instruction  of  low 
quality,  and  in  some  sort  passive,  such  as  a  weak  and  incom- 
plete being  might  receive." l 

In  other  terms,  education  has  not  only  to  present  knowl- 
edges to  a  mind  already  formed,  but  its  very  first  duty  is 
to  form  that  mind. 

47.  THE  INSTRUCTION  AND  EDUCATION  OP  THE  MIND.  — 
Intellectual  education  is,  then,  something  besides  instruc- 

1  Dupanloup,  De  I'Education,  liv.  ler,  chap.  ii. 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  55 

tion :  it  is  the  end  and  aim,  —  instruction  is  but  the  means 
of  attaining  it.  But  instruction  is  not  only  valuable  in 
itself :  it  is  the  essential  means,  the  most  powerful  instru- 
ment, of  intellectual  education. 

Instruction,  in  fact,  brings  to  the  mind  the  aliment  it 
needs  for  nourishment,  for  adding  to  its  growth  and 
stature. 

On  this  point  American  educators  are  fond  of  compar- 
ing the  mind  with  the  body,  and  try  to  show  that  knowl- 
edge is  the  aliment  of  the  spirit. 

"  The  appetite,"  says  Mr.  Baldwin,  "  craves  food,  and  in  the 
presence  of  suitable  food  the  entire  digestive  apparatus  acts; 
food  is  converted  into  muscles ;  muscles  are  used ;  the  result  is 
physical  power.  The  soul  longs  for  knowledge ;  in  the  presence 
of  suitable  knowledge  every  faculty  of  the  soul  is  roused  to  ac- 
tion ;  the  child  knows,  feels,  chooses,  acts ;  the  result  is  increased 
mental  power." 1 

No  doubt  the  mind,  if  not  fed,  would  become  impover- 
ished and  enfeebled.  Even  in  mature  age  the  intelligence, 
if  it  does  not  renew  its  provision  of  ideas  by  study,  lan- 
guishes and  grows  weak,  just  as  the  body  becomes  ema- 
ciated under  the  influence  of  privations  and  of  prolonged 
fasting.  For  a  still  better  reason,  at  the  period  of  its 
early  development  the  intellect  cannot  grow  strong  if  it 
is  not  nourished ;  and  it  is  instruction  which  is  the  aliment 
of  the  spirit 

I  add  that  if  the  aliment  is  well  chosen,  if  the  knowl- 
edges are  presented  with  order,  with  discernment ;  if  the 
studies  are  systematic  and  well  conducted ;  not  only  will 
the  mind  become  strengthened  by  them,  but  it  will  also 

1  Baldwin,  The  Art  of  School  Management,  New  York,  1881,  p.  313. 
See  the  same  principles  developed  in  The  Principles  and  Practice  <tf 
Teaching,  by  James  Johonnot,  p.  15. 


56  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

be  trained.  The  natural  fruit  of  instruction,  wisely  admin- 
istered, is  not  only  wisdom  but  precision  in  the  play  of 
the  faculties,  —  in  a  word,  intellectual  education. 

It  is  true,  on  the  other  hand,  that  instruction,  if  poorly 
administered,  might  still  transmit  knowledge,  but  it  would 
be  valueless  for  the  general  culture  of  the  mind.  Incom- 
plete studies  leave  dangerous  flaws  in  the  intelligence ; 
they  develop  only  one  or  two  faculties  at  the  expense  of 
all  the  others.  Studies  that  are  too  hasty  weary  the 
mind,  and  may  enervate  it  for  life ;  pushed  too  far,  they 
encumber  and  weigh  it  down ;  irregular  and  disconnected, 
they  becloud  and  deform  it. 

48.  METHODS  OF  CULTURE  AND  METHODS  OF  INSTRUC- 
TION.—  Instruction  and  intellectual  education,  then,  are 
things  which  are  inseparable.  All  the  faults  and  all  the 
excellences  of  instruction  will  be  re-echoed  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  faculties,  and  will  contribute,  for  good  or  ill, 
to  the  culture  of  the  mind. 

There  is  no  other  means  of  cultivating  and  forming 
the  intellectual  faculties,  than  exercise,  —  exercise  which  is 
judicious  and  prudent ;  and  there  is  no  other  intellectual 
exercise  than  instruction  under  its  different  forms. 

Does  it  follow  that  the  educator  ought  immediately  to 
undertake  the  examination  of  the  different  branches  of 
instruction  in  order  to  study  their  methods,  and  that  he 
has  no  other  course  to  follow,  in  order  to  direct  intel- 
lectual education  and  to  determine  its  laws? 

By  no  means.  There  are  two  different  points  of  de- 
parture in  pedagogy, — either  the  thinking  subject  who 
is  to  be  educated,  or  the  objects  which  are  to  be  taught. 
In  the  first  case  we  start  from  the  nature  of  man,  con- 
sider the  laws  of  the  formation  of  the  faculties,  and  pro- 
pose general  methods  of  culture  in  conformity  with  these 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  57 

laws.  In  the  second  case  we  start  from  each  one  of  the 
several  branches  of  instruction,  determine  their  nature 
and  characteristics,  and  then  determine  the  methods  of 
instruction  which  are  in  conformity  with  these  charac- 
teristics. 

In  other  terms,  there  are  methods  of  culture  inferred  from 
the  laws  of  psychology,  and  methods  of  instruction  which, 
while  striving  to  accord  with  psychology,  are  based  chiefly 
on  the  nature  of  the  knowledges  which  are  to  be  taught. 

We  shall  first  study  the  methods  of  culture,  by  examining 
the  different  faculties  one  after  another ;  but  before  en- 
tering upon  this  detailed  examination,  it  is  necessary  to 
reply  to  some  general  questions  which  govern  the  whole 
subject,  and  to  recall  certain  principles  which  apply  with- 
out distinction  to  all  the  parts  of  intellectual  education. 
Moreover,  it  is  not  best  to  make  too  much  of  these  consid- 
erations, which,  simply  because  they  are  very  general,  offer 
no  great  practical  interest.  An  American  educator  enu- 
merates no  less  than  fourteen  general  principles  of  intellec- 
tual education.1  "We  shall  not  imitate  his  example,  for 
to  do  this  it  would  be  necessary  to  enter  upon  the  task 
of  transcribing  in  this  place  all  the  results  of  psychological 
study.  We  shall  assume  that  these  results  are  known  for 
the  most  part,  and  shall  limit  ourselves  to  a  few  obser- 
vations on  the  order  of  development  of  the  faculties,  on 
their  necessary  harmony,  on  the  essential  characteristics 
of  intellectual  education,  and  on  the  applications  to  edu- 
cation which  result  from  them. 

49.  ORDER  OF  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  FACULTIES.  — 
Is  it  true  that  all  the  intellectual  faculties  expand  at  once, 
just  as  at  nightfall  all  the  stars  glow  in  the  heavens?  Or, 

1  J.  P.  Wickersham,  Methods  of  Instruction,  pp.  37-61. 


58  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

on  the  contrary,  do  they  develop  only  successively,  as  the 
flowers  unfold  one  after  another  on  the  stalk  which  supports 
them? 

Educators  have  resolved  the  question  differently.  If  we 
are  to  believe  Rousseau,  the  mind  is  formed,  so  to  speak, 
of  successive  layers-;  there  are  stages,  steps,  in  the  evolution 
of  the  intellect.  To  the  faculties  of  sense,  which  manifest 
themselves  from  the  earliest  years,  there  succeed  very  much 
later  the  faculties  of  abstraction  and  of  reasoning. 

Other  writers,  who  approach  nearer  the  truth,  incline 
towards  the  contrary  exaggeration,  and  for  the  principle 
of  succession  substitute  that  of  simultaneity. 

"  We  would  bring  all  the  faculties  under  the  view  of  the  educa- 
tor,"  says  E.  Joly,  "  for  the  purpose  of  studying  them  in  the  light 
of  a  useful  and  practical  principle.  This  principle  we  would 
formulate  as  follows :  The  intellect  is  an  aggregate  of  faculties 
which  are  developed  simultaneously,  and  lend  one  another  mutual 
assistance." l 

The  truth  is  that  all  the  mental  faculties,  if  we  consider 
them  in  their  germs,  appear  in  the  child  at  the  same  time ; 
but  they  acquire  their  full  power,  attain  their  maturity,  only 
one  after  another,  and  in  an  invariable  order  determined  by 
the  progress  in  age. 

Herbert  Spencer,  in  well-known  pages  of  his  "Educa- 
tion," has  determined  the  laws  of  intellectual  evolution. 
He  proves  that  the  mind  proceeds  from  the  simple  to  the 
complex,  from  the  concrete  to  the  abstract,  from  the  par- 
ticular to  the  general,  from  the  indefinite  to  the  definite, 
from  the  empirical  to  the  rational.2 

From  these  he  concludes  that  we  should  first  present  to 

1  E.  Joly,  Notions  de  pedagogic,  p.  32. 

2  For  Joly's  criticism  on  the  laws  laid  down  by  Mr.  Spencer,  see 
Notions  de  pedagogic,  pp.  46  et  suii). 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  59 

children  only  simple  subjects  for  study,  sensible  objects, 
particular  things,  in  order  to  lead  them  forward  step  by 
step  to  complex  truths,  to  abstract  generalities,  to  con- 
ceptions of  the  reason ;  and  he  draws  the  further  inference 
from  them  that  we  can  require  of  the  infant  intelligence 
only  incomplete  and  vague  notions,  which  the  travail  of  the 
spirit  will  gradually  elaborate  and  classify. 

50.  THE  INTELLECTUAL  STATE  OF  THE  CHILD. — Closely 
examine  the  child,  and  you  will  see  that  his  faculties  resem- 
ble those  of  the  grown  man  more  closely  than  is  generally 
supposed. 

"The  child  of  five  years,"  says  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure, 
"is  in  possession  of  all  the  intellectual  faculties  accorded  to 
humanity.  Some  of  these  faculties,  weak  and  but  little  used,  and 
often  called  into  play  by  the  most  frivolous  motives,  express  them- 
selves as  yet  only  by  insignificant  acts ;  but  nevertheless  we  see 
them  manifest  themselves."  l 

In  the  simple  fact  of  drawing  back  his  hand  from  the 
fire  because  he  has  once  been  burned  by  it,  the  child  exhibits 
memory,  judgment,  and  inductive  reasoning.  It  is  none  the 
less  true  that,  in  general,  he  feels  more  than  he  reasons, 
and  that  when  he  reasons  he  does  so  in  his  own  way. 

"  The  perceptive  powers,"  says  Mr.  Wickersham,  "  are'  stronger 
and  more  active  in  youth  than  the  other  intellectual  faculties."  a 

And  the  American  educator  adds  : 

"A  child  is  merely  an  animal  until  there  is  awakened  in  him 
the  power  of  self-consciousness.  After  this  I  can  find  no  time 
when  all  his  faculties  are  not  active  in  some  degree ;  but  his 
perceptive  powers  are  the  strongest  and  most  active  during  the 
whole  period  of  childhood  and  youth." 

1  L' Education  progressive,  Tome  I.,  Preface. 

2  J.  P.  Wickersham,  Methods  of  Instruction,  pp.  40,  41. 


60  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  We  nowhere  find  nature  beginning  anything,"  says  Madame 
Necker  de  Saussure ;  "  we  never  surprise  her  at  creating ;  she 
always  seems  to  be  developing." 

In  other  terms,  if  the  child  is  already,  from  the  intellectual 
point  of  view,  a  little  man,  if  we  find  in  him  the  germ  and 
almost  the  equivalent  of  all  the  faculties  of  mature  age,  at 
least  these  faculties  do  not  affect  the  same  aspects  in  his 
case,  are  not  .all  presented  with  the  same  degree  of  power 
and  precision.  Just  as  all  articles  of  food  do  not  agree 
with  the  stomach  of  the  babe,  which  as  yet  digests  only 
milk,  so  all  reasons  are  not  fit  for  the  reasoning  of  the  child. 
He  already  feels  the  need  of  finding  an  explanation  for 
things,  of  seeking  their  cause  and  purpose ;  but  he  will 
accept  for  such  explanations  reasons  which  are  trivial  and 
puerile.  The  progress  accomplished  by  man  from  his  early 
years  up  to  maturity  introduces  into  the  mind  no  powers 
which  are  really  new ;  but  it  modifies  their  character, 
increases  their  vigor,  and  extends  their  compass.  All  the 
faculties  are  awakened  at  the  same  time  in  the  human 
intelligence,  just  as  upon  a  race-course  all  the  runners  start 
at  the  same  instant ;  but  they  do  not  advance  at  the  same 
pace,  —  some  take  the  lead,  while  others  fall  behind,  and 
they  reach  the  goal  only  one  after  another. 

51.  PROGRESSIVE  EDUCATION.  —  Intellectual  education  will 
take  account  of  this  successive  development  of  the  faculties. 
It  will  be  progressive ;  it  will  not  forget  that  in  its  slow 
evolution  the  mind  changes  its  identity  from  moment  to 
moment ;  that  there  are  ages  for  the  intelligence  as  for  the 
body ;  that  little  by  little  the  primitive  dispositions  are 
renewed  and  transformed ;  and  that  the  moral  nature  is 
insensibly  created.  Consequently,  in  the  aid  which  it  will 
bring  the  child,  either  for  exciting  or  for  moderating  his 
faculties,  education  will  adapt  itself  exactly  to  the  conditions 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  61 

of  nature  and  to  the  changes  which  occur  in  the  soul  with 
the  march  of  time  ;  it  will  accompany  the  mind  in  all  the 
stages  of  its  progress,  and  will  adapt  itself  to  all  its  move- 
ments ;  it  will  be,  as  Mr.  Spencer  has  said,  "  the  objective 
counterpart  of  the  subjective  development  of  the  mind." 

52.  EQUILIBRIUM  AND  HARMONY  OF  THE  FACULTIES.  — 
From  having  recognized  the  differences  which  nature  has 
established,  with  respect  to  the  degree  of  development, 
among  the  faculties  of  the  child,  we  shall  not  on  that 
account  come  to  forget  the  unity  of  the  human  soul.  Edu- 
cation should  be  progressive,  and  not  successive,  as  Rous- 
seau wished.  The  author  of  the  Emile,  so  to  speak,  cut 
the  existence  of  the  child  into  distinct  sections,  as  the  period 
of  sense-perception,  the  period  of  judgment.  No !  the 
mind  of  the  child  is  already  an  organized  and  complete 
whole,  which  contains  in  germ  all  the  faculties ;  and  if  it 
is  not  possible  to  put  them  all  upon  the  same  footing,  to 
make  them  all  march  abreast,  at  least  there  is  not  a  single 
instant  in  life  when  we  should  not  try  to  cultivate  and 
develop  them  all,  though  in  different  degrees. 

The  independent  culture  of  each  faculty  should  not  make 
us  lose  sight  of  the  final  aim,  which  is  the  harmony  and 
the  equilibrium  of  all  the  faculties. 

"  The  equilibrium  of  the  faculties,  in  the  human  intelligence, 
is  what  the  equilibrium  of  forces  is  in  the  physical  world, — it 
maintains  order  without  hindering  movement.  Every  faculty 
strong  enough  to  suspend  or  cripple  the  action  of  other  facul- 
ties is  a  despot;  and  in  order  to  be  sound  the  mind  needs  to 
be  free."1 

Let  us  be  on  our  guard  against  minds  in  which  certain 
intellectual  dispositions  dominate  exclusively  and  smother 

1  Guizot,  Conseils  d'un  pere  sur  I' 'education. 


62  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

the  others.  "When  certain  faculties  destroy  the  equilibrium, 
genius,  it  is  true,  sometimes  appears ;  but  the  more  often 
that  which  results  from  this  unequal  education  is  incohe- 
rence, disorder,  and  impotence. 

The  ideal  of  a  good  intellectual  education  is  a  mind 
in  which  all  the  faculties  occupy  a  place  proportionate 
to  their  value  and  importance,  just  as  the  ideal  of  a  physi- 
cal education  is  a  complete  body  in  which  all  the  organs 
are  harmoniously  developed  and  all  the  functions  regu- 
larly co-operate  in  the  maintenance  of  life. 

"The  principal  rule,"  says  Kant,  "is  to  cultivate  no  faculty 
solely  for  itself,  but  to  cultivate  each  in  view  of  the  others;  for 
example,  the  imagination  for  the  sake  of  the  intelligence." 

Just  as  in  the  soul,  as  a  whole,  the  sensibility  and  the 
will  ought  to  be  neither  sacrificed  nor  preferred  to  the 
intelligence,  so  in  the  intelligence  itself  no  aptitude  ought 
to  be  neglected,  no  one  ought  to  be  the  object  of  a  privi- 
leged culture. 

53.  THE  FACULTIES  SHOULD  LEND  ONE  ANOTHER  MUTUAL 
SUPPORT. — The  harmony  of  the  faculties  so  nicely  con- 
forms to  the  intent  of  nature,  and  so  to  the  purpose  of 
education,  that  these  different  faculties  are  mutually  helpful, 
and  it  is  almost  impossible  to  develop  one  without  at  the 
same  time  preparing  for  the  development  of  the  others. 
Nicole  had  called  attention  to  this  fact. 

"Instruction,"  he  said,  "gives  neither  memory,  imagination, 
nor  intelligence,  but  it  cultivates  all  these  elements  by  strength- 
ening one  through  another.  We  aid  the  judgment  by  memory, 
and  we  relieve  the  memory  by  imagination  and  judgment."  l 

It   is   only    in   minds   badly   trained   that    the   different 
1  De  I'Education  d'un  prince,  p.  35. 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  63 

faculties  come  into  collision  and  manifest,  so  to  speak, 
anarchical  tendencies.  A  sound  mind  is  a  real  organism, 
in  which  everything  has  its  own  place,  but  in  which  all 
things  work  together  towards  the  same  end. 

54.  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  INTELLECTUAL  EVOLU- 
TION. —  From    all   that   has   preceded   it    follows   that   the 
point  of  departure  in  intellectual  education  is  the  unequal 
march,  the  progressive"  evolution,  of  the  different  faculties, 
and   that  the   term,   the   aim,   is   the   development  —  I  do 
not  say   equal,   but  proportionate   and   normal — of    these 
same    faculties.     We  now   see  where  we   are.  going    and 
whence  we  set  out. 

But  by  what  routes  shall  we  go?  According  to  what 
general  principles  ought  the  educator  to  govern  his  con' 
duct?  It  is  not  sufficient  to  say  that  education  as  a 
whole  will  conform  to  the  order  of  nature.  Nature,  in  fact, 
is  a  grand  and  vague  word,  which  educators  and  moral- 
ists interpret  just  as  it  pleases  them,  and  under  cover  of 
which  they  give  currency  to  the  most  various  and  often 
to  the  most  singular  conceptions. 

Without  entering  into  the  details  of  method,  which  shall 
be  the  purpose  of  the  chapters  composing  the  second 
part  of  this  work,  it  is  proper  to  determine  at  this  point 
some  of  the  laws  of  intellectual  evolution  and  the  educa- 
tional results  which  flow  from  them. 

55.  THE  MIND  is  NOT  A  VASE  TO  BE  FILLED,  BUT  A  FIRE 
THAT  is  TO  BE  MADE  TO  GLOW.  —  The  mind  is  not  a  tabula 
rasa,   a  blank  page,  on  which  we  have  but  to  write,   a 
simple  receptacle  which  it  suffices  to  fill  just  as  we   fill  a 
measure  with  grain ;  but  it  is  an  aggregate  of  germs  which 
aspire  to  develop  themselves. 

How  manv   times  have  teachers  transgressed   this  psy- 


64  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

chological  law !  Do  we  not  violate  it  every  day  when  our 
chief  concern  is  to  cram  the  mind  of  the  child,  to  accu- 
mulate a  mass  of  knowledge,  at  the  risk  of  smothering 
the  intelligence,  which  we  should  only  arouse  and  excite? 
The  overcrowding  of  modern  programmes  is  increasing  from 
day  to  day,  to  the  great  detriment  of  intellectual  liberty. 
Even  supposing  that  the  mind  is  at  birth  a  vase  ready 
made,  it  would  still  be  an  insoluble  problem  to  propose 
to  have  contained  in  a  vase  of  invariable  dimensions  ten, 
twenty,  or  a  hundred  times  as  much  matter.  But  besides, 
it  is  not  the  purpose  of  education  to  produce  prodigies 
of  memory,  erudites  capable  of  discussing  whatever  is 
knowable. 

"The  purpose  of  study,"  says  Greard,  "is  above  all  else  to 
create  the  instrument  of  intellectual  labor,  to  make  the  judg- 
ment surer ;  and  for  this  purpose  it  is  not  necessary  to  teach  all 
that  it  is  possible  to  know,  but  that  of  which  it  is  not  permis- 
sible to  be  ignorant."1 

Then  let  us  renounce  the  pretensions  of  those  who  would 
have  the  human  intelligence  the  resume  of  universal  knowl- 
edge. Let  us  no  longer  admire  feats  of  strength  like  those 
mentioned  by  Dupanloup. 

"One  pupil  recited  the  whole  of  the  Telemaque,  another  re- 
cited a  grammatical  analysis  which  contained  more  than  sixty 
thousand  Greek  and  French  words." 

Let  us  return  to  the  old  maxim,  Non  multa,  sed  multum. 
It  is  better  to  know  a  few  things  thoroughly  than  to  know 
all  things  superficially. 

56.  RESPECT  FOR  THE  LIBERTY  AND  THE  VOLUNTARY  EF- 
FORT OF  THE  CHILD. — The  teachers  who  still  believe  that 

1  Memoir e  sur  la  question  des  programmes  dans  I'enseignement  se- 
condaire,  1884. 


INTELLECTUAL  EDUCATION.  65 

the  mind  is  an  inert,  passive  capacity,  of  course  have  no 
regard  for  the  liberty  of  the  child;  there  is  no  occasion 
for  respecting  powers  whose  existence  is  not  admitted.  But 
all  those  who  believe  that  nature  has  planted  in  the  in- 
telligence vital  principles,  which  await  only  a  favorable 
occasion  and  a  proper  stimulus  to  awaken  and  expand, 
feel  on  the  contrary  the  need  of  not  hampering  and  not 
opposing  the  natural  evolution  of  the  mind. 

Allow  the  child  who  is  beginning  to  think  the  largest 
liberty  possible.  Do  not  bend  his  intelligence  to  artificial 
forms ;  do  not  compel  him  to  endure  by  force  too  many 
didactic  lessons ;  do  not  impose  on  him  a  diet  which  he  is 
not  capable  of  digesting. 

"  When  men,"  says  Mr.  Spencer,  "  received  their  creed  and  its 
interpretations  from  an  infallible  authority  deigning  no  expla- 
nations, it  was  natural  that  the  teaching  of  children  should  be 
dogmatic.  While  'believe  and  ask  no  questions'  was  the  inaxim 
of  the  church,  it  was  fitly  the  maxim  of  the  school.  Conversely 
now  that  Protestantism  [Mr.  Spencer  should  add,  '  and  philoso- 
phy'] has  gained  for  adults  a  right  of  private  judgment,  and 
established  the  practice  of  appealing  to  reason,  there  is  harmony 
in  the  change  that  has  made  juvenile  instruction  a  process  of 
exposition  addressed  to  the  understanding."1 

57.     WE    MUST   KNOW  HOW   NOT   TO   BE   IN   HASTE. "The 

most  useful  rule  of  all  education,"  said  Rousseau,  "  is  not 
to  gain  time,  but  to  lose  it."  Under  the  form  of  a  paradox, 
this  was  saying  that  it  is  not  wise  to  make  haste,  and 
that  education  ought  to  act  upon  the  frail  and  delicate 
intelligence  of  the  child  with  a  slowness  copied  from  nature. 

"  Let  us  protect  ourselves,"  says  Madame  Pape-Carpantier  to  the 
same  effect,  "  against  that  unthinking  zeal,  or  that  culpable  vanity, 
which  would  exact  from  the  child  all  that  his  elastic  intelligence 

1  Education,  p.  97. 


66  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

can  produce,  at  the  risk  of  exhausting  it,  at  the  risk  of  destroying 
the  fruit  in  the  flower." 

58.  ATTRACTIVE  LABOR.  —  It  is  a  truth  now  generally 
admitted  that  there  are  no  studies  really  profitable,  save 
those  which  respond  to  the  needs  of  the  intelligence,  and 
there  provoke  an  agreeable  excitation.  Herbert  Spencer  ear- 
nestly recommends  that  the  tastes  of  the  child  shall  be  taken 
into  account.  ""Work,"  says  G-reard,  "  being  but  the  devel- 
opment of  natural  activity,  the  exercise  of  that  activity 
ought  certainly  to  make  the  child  happy." 

The  pleasure  which  the  child  feels  is  in  fact  the  sign 
that  his  mind  is  developing  with  ease,  that  he  is  assimilating 
the  knowledge  which  has  been  presented  to  him.  On  the 
other  hand,  his  repugnances,  his  indolence,  and  his  inertia 
prove  that  the  instruction  which  displeases  him  has  been 
presented  at  too  early  a  period,  or  has  been  presented  in  a 
bad  way.1 

1  Following  Mr.  Spencer,  M.  Compayre  assigns  two  reasons  why 
studies  may  be  disagreeable  to  a  child :  (1)  They  may  be  unseasonable 
or  (2)  they  may  be  badly  presented.  There  is  still  another  reason : 
they  may  involve  a  mode  of  mental  activity  which  has  not  yet  been 
developed  so  fully  as  to  proceed  with  facility,  and  hence  with  pleasure. 
Under  the  most  favorable  circumstances,  the  beginning  of  a  new 
subject  will  often  be  unpleasant,  because  the  mind  has  not  yet  become 
accustomed  to  this  new  mode  of  exercise.  If  we  regard  symmetry 
and  harmony  of  development  as  one  aim  of  education,  a  pupil's  dislike 
of  a  study  may  indicate  that  he  ought  to  pursue  it. 

It  should  be  added  also  that  a  study  will  grow  tedious  when  the 
mental  activity  it  involves  reaches  the  fatigue-point.  In  a  word,  the 
same  rules  may  be  applied  to  mental  as  to  physical  activity.  In 
both  cases  free  and  spontaneous  activity  is  agreeable;  activity  that 
is  constrained,  or  that  reaches  the  fatigue-point,  is  tedious  or  disa- 
greeable. But  these  last  conditions  are  often  inevitable,  and  are  even 
desirable,  for  robustness,  power,  and  manliness  can  be  attained  in 
no  other  way.  In  a  larger  sense,  there  is  no  discipline  like  a  noble 
sorrow.  (P.) 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  67 

Pleasure,  then,  is  not  a  thing  to  be  despised  in  instruc* 
tion ;  it  will  give  to  the  faculties  an  unusual  animation. 
And  it  is  not  necessary,  in  order  to  make  the  child  happy  in 
his  work,  to  attempt  to  enliven  instruction  by  amusements 
which  impair  its  character.  It  is  sufficient  to  follow  a 
proper  order,  one  adapted  to  the  powers  of  the  child. 
Mental  activity  is  agreeable  in  itself. 

"Where  young  people  are  taught  as  they  ought  to  be,  they 
are  quite  as  happy  in  school  as  at  play,  seldom  less  delighted  — 
nay,  often  more  —  with  the  well-directed  exercise  of  their  mental 
energies,  than  with  that  of  their  physical  powers."1 

59.  NECESSITY  OF  EFFORT.  —  But  the  legitimate  desire  to 
make  study  agreeable,  to  sweeten  the  toil  of  the  child, 
ought  not  to  make  us  forget  the  necessity  of  effort.  Let  us 
not  yield  to  the  temptation  of  saying,  with  Fenelon,  "  every- 
thing should  be  done  with  pleasure."  According  to  the 
amiable  author  of  the  Education  desfilles,  everything  should 
be  learned  while  playing.  This  is  neither  possible  nor  desir- 
able. Let  us  avoid  whatever  is  repulsive,  but  let  us  not  go 
so  far  as  to  proscribe  what  is  laborious. 

"  School  is  a  forced  culture,"  says  Kant.  "  We  should  accustom 

the  child  to  work It  is  to  render  him  a  very  poor  service 

to  accustom  him  to  regard  everything  as  play 

"Whatever  is  done  to  make  study  agreeable,"  says  Rousseau, 
"  will  prevent  children  from  profiting  by  it And  so  Ma- 
dame de  Stae'l  says :  '  The  education  that  takes  place  by  amusing 
one's  self  dissipates  thought.  Pain  of  every  kind  is  one  of  the 
greatest  secrets  of  nature,  and  the  mind  of  the  child  ought  to 
accustom  itself  to  studious  efforts,  just  as  our  soul  should  be 
accustomed  to  suffering.' " 

"  Asceticism  is  disappearing  out  of  education,  as  out  of 
life,"  Mr.  Spencer  has  said,  in  his  brilliant  way.  Yes  ;  but 

1  Professor  Pillans,  quoted  by  Herbert  Spencer,  Education,  p.  159. 


68  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

for  the  old-time  asceticism  there  must  not  be  substituted  a 
sort  of  pedagogic  epicureanism,  distinguished  by  instruction 
which  is  amusing  as  well  as  by  discipline  which  is  lax. 

Pain  ought  not  to  be  purposely  proscribed  in  education. 
It  awakens  new  ideas  in  the  soul ;  it  stirs  the  mind  to 
depths  scarcely  suspected  before  the  suffering  came.  No 
stimulus  is  equal  to  that  of  pain,  for  liberating  the  human 
personality  from  the  disguises  which  envelop  it. 

"Man  is  an  apprentice;  pain  is  his  master!" 

60.  THE  INNER  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MIND.  —  The  idea 
of  an  inner  and  spontaneous  development  of  the  mind  is 
not  a  new  thing  in  pedagogy. 

"Properly  speaking,"  says  Nicole,  "it  is  not  the  teacher  nor 
outside  instruction,  which  causes  things  to  be  comprehended ; 
they  do  nothing  more  than  expose  them  to  the  interior  light  of 
the  mind,  by  which  alone  they  are  comprehended ;  so  that  when 
there  is  not  the  concurrence  of  this  light,  instruction  is  to  no 
more  purpose  than  as  though  one  were  to  exhibit  pictures  in 
the  night." 

In  fact,  in  an  education  properly  administered,  it  is  of 
less  importance  to  assure  the  superficial  instruction,  the 
exterior  culture  and  adornment  of  the  mind,  than  to 
secure  its  inner  and  profound  development.  "To  instruct 
a  child,"  said  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure,  pithily,  "is 
to  construct  him  from  within." 

Let  us,  then,  reject  all  methods  of  instruction  which,  like 
those  of  the  Jesuits,  leave  inactive  the  inner  forces  of  the 
soul.  To  find  for  the  mind  occupations  which  absorb  it, 
which  lull  it  like  a  dream,  without  wholly  awakening  it ;  to 
call  attention  to  words,  to  niceties  of  speech,  to  the  trivial 
facts  of  history,  so  as  to  reduce  by  so  much  the  opportunity 
for  thinking ;  to  provoke  a  certain  degree  of  intellectual 
activity,  prudently  arrested  at  the  point  where  reflective 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  69 

reason  succeeds  a  garnished  memory;  —  in  a  word,  to  stir 
the  mind  from  without  just  enough  to  rescue  it  from  its 
natural  ignorance,  but  not  enough  to  make  it  really  act 
for  itself  by  a  manly  display  of  all  its  faculties,  —  such  was 
the  method  of  the  Jesuits.  It  is  good  for  nothing  but  to 
make  grown-up  children,  not  men. 

61.  MEANS  TO  BE  EMPLOYED. — It  is  not  our  purpose  in 
this  place  to  enter  upon  details  of  method ;  this  is  a  subject 
which  we  shall  resume  further  on  (see  Part  Second).  Let 
us  merely  illustrate,  by  a  few  quotations,  the  extent  to  which 
modern  educators,  particularly  American  educators,  are  pre- 
occupied with  the  inner  activity  of  the  mind. 

"  The  teacher  should  never  do  for  the  child  what  it  can  do  for 
itself.  It  is  the  child's  own  activity  that  will  give  strength  to  its 
powers  and  increase  the  capacity  of  the  mind.  The  teacher  must 
avoid  telling  too  much  or  aiding  the  child  too  frequently.  A  mere 
hint  or  suggestive  question,  to  lead  the  mind  in  the  proper  direc- 
tion, is  worth  much  more  than  direct  assistance,  for  it  not  only 
gives  activity  and  consequently  mental  development,  but  culti- 
vates the  power  of  original  investigation."1 

Mr.  Wickersham,  another  American  educator,  proceeds  in 
the  same  vein : 

"  The  condition  of  the  learner  should  not  be  one  of  passive 
reception,  but  of  earnest  self-exertion.  One  trial  of  strength 
should  induce  other  trials;  one  difficulty  overcome  should  ex- 
cite an  ambition  to  triumph  over  other  difficulties.  The  teacher 
should  create  interest  in  study,  incite  curiosity,  promote  inquiry, 
prompt  investigation,  inspire  self-confidence,  give  hints,  make 
suggestions,  tempt  pupils  on  to  try  their  strength  and  test 
their  skill."2 

Mr.  Wickersham  continues  by  citing  the  example  of  a  bird 
teaching  her  young  ones  to  fly. 

1  Edward  Brooks,  Normal  Methods  of  Teaching,  pp.  21,  22. 

2  Wickersham,  op.  cU..  pp.  23,  24. 


70  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"One  of  my  best  lessons  in  teaching  was  taught  me  by  a 
robin.  It  was  in  my  garden,  and  the  mother-robin  was  teaching 
her  young  brood  to  fly.  A  little  robin  sat  upon  the  nest  and 
seemed  afraid  to  move.  The  mother-bird  came  and  stood  by  its 
side,  stroked  it  with  her  bill,  and  then  hopped  to  a  neighboring 
twig  and  stood  awhile,  as  if  to  induce  the  little  bird  to  follow. 
Again  and  again  she  repeated  her  caresses,  and  then  hopped 
nimbly  to  the  same  twig.  At  length  the  little  bird  gained 
courage,  and  to  the  great  joy  of  its  mother  shook  its  weak 
wings,  started,  and  stood  by  her  side.  Another  more  distant 
twig  was  now  selected,  and  further  effort  brought  the  little  bird 
to  it  also.  And  so  the  process  was  repeated  many  times,  until 
the  timid  fledgling,  now  grown  quite  bold,  could  sail  away  with 
its  mother  over  woodlands,  fields,  and  meadows." 

Under  a  pleasing  form  the  above  is  a  paraphrase  of  this 

thought  of  Froebel :    "Let  teachers  not  lose  sight  of  this 

truth :   Always  and  at  the  same  time  they  must  give  and 
take,  precede  and  follow,  act  and  let  act." 

62.  INTELLECTUAL  INEQUALITIES. — In  spite  of  Jacotot's 
paradox,  "All  intelligences  are  equal,"  it  is  certain  that  pro- 
found differences  separate  minds  in  their  native  constitution, 
and  that  these  intellectual  inequalities  do  not  all  come  from 
the  fact  that  we  do  not  all  have  the  same  tastes  and  the 
same  will.  The  teacher  should  know  how  to  take  into  ac- 
count this  diversity  of  faculties,  and  should  recall  the  max-im 
of  Locke,  "There  are  perhaps  no  two  children  who  can  be 
brought  up  by  exactly  the  same  methods." 

However,  do  not  let  us  push  the  significance  of  these 
observations  too  far.  Do  not  let  us  diversify  intellectual 
education  without  limit.  While  paying  regard  to  natural 
inequalities  for  the  purpose  of  correcting  them,  and  to 
special  aptitudes  for  the  purpose  of  favoring  them,  let  us 
not  forget  that  we  must  propose  to  all  pupils  the  same  aim, 
and  that,  in  general,  it  is  possible  to  lead  them  to  it.  As 


INTELLECTUAL   EDUCATION.  71 

Madame  Guizot  said,  "  Save  in  some  special  and  rare  cases, 
we  are  all  made  for  everything.  .  .  .  We  must  not  so  de- 
vote our  faculties  to  one  special  line  of  action  as  to  become 
unfitted  for  every  other."1 

63.  SPECIAL  APTITUDES. — It  is  not  best,  then,  to  follow 
the  current  of  nature  with  absolute  compliance,  and  when  a 
child  gives  evidence  of  particular  dispositions,  to  fall  in,  so 
to  speak,  with  his  predilections,  and  to  devote  him  by  prefer- 
ence to  the  things  for  which  he  has  a  marked  aptitude.     On 
this  point  it  seems  to  us  that  Nicole  is  lacking  in  wisdom 
and  moderation. 

"There  are  children,"  he  said,  "who  should  be  busied  with 
scarcely  anything  except  what  depends  on  the  memory,  because 
they  have  a  prompt  memory  and  a  weak  judgment;  and  there 
are  others  who  should  devote  themselves  to  the  things  that  de- 
pend on  the  judgment,  because  they  have  more  judgment  than 
memory."  2 

No;  without  asserting  that  education  ought  to  cast  all 
minds  in  the  same  mould,  nor  that  we  should  try  to  bring  all 
intelligences  up  to  the  same  level,  let  us  not  renounce  the 
purpose  to  have  them  pursue  a  common  ideal.  For  guarding 
the  personality  of  each  pupil,  and  for  assuring  sufficient 
liberty  to  his  particular  dispositions,  we  have  done  enough 
when,  for  the  old  tyrannical  and  oppressive  methods,  we 
have  substituted  the  new  methods,  which  appeal  to  the 
spontaneity  and  the  voluntary  effort  of  the  child. 

64.  INTELLECTUAL    EDUCATION    ITSELF    SHOULD   HAVE   A 
PRACTICAL  AIM.  —  Even  in  our  day  we  too  often  forget  the 
old  Latin  adage,  Vitas,  non  scholce,  discitur  (It  is  for  life, 

1  Lettres  de  famille  sur  I'tducation,  p.  77. 

2  Nicole,  De  I' Education  d'un  prince,  p.  36. 


72  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

not  for  school,  that  instruction  is  given).  Preparation  for 
life,  —  such  is  the  true  definition  of  instruction,  especially  of 
common-school  instruction.  It  is  not  a  grammarian,  it  is 
not  a  logician,  as  Montaigne  says,1  but  a  man  that  is  to  be 
trained.  Then  let  us  not  demand  that  intellectual  education 
should  develop  the  brilliant  faculties  whose  purpose  is  mental 
adornment,  the  faculties  which  serve  for  display,  serviceable 
to  men  of  leisure,  but  not  adapted  to  the  humble  and  labori- 
ous condition  of  the  common  people.  What  is  needed  is  a 
manly  training  of  the  useful  faculties,  those  of  which  it  may 
be  said  that  they  are  arms  for  the  battle  of  life.  Doubtless 
the  common  school  is  not  a  technical  or  professional  school, 
but  it  ought  to  be  a  practical  school.  "  The  end  of  educa- 
tion," justly  remarks  an  American  writer,  "is  not  to  teach 
pupils  to  know  and  use  books,  but  to  know  and  make  right 
use  of  themselves."2 

1  See  Compayrt's  History  of  Pedagogy,  p.  103. 

2  Baldwin,  op.  cit.,  p.  313. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

THE   EDUCATION   OF  THE   SENSES. 

65.  THE  BEGINNING  OF  INTELLIGENCE. — He  who  would 
know  in  its  completeness  the  nature  of  the  intelligence 
should  study  the  child  beside  his  cradle. 

At  first  he  is  but  a  little,  inert  mass,  that  awakens  only  to 
cling  to  his  mother's  breast  or  to  weep ;  and  yet  in  that 
body  still  so  frail  there  slumber  the  germs  of  a  complete 
moral  personality.  Upon  contact  with  the  exterior  world 
all  these  germs  will  expand,  all  that  latent  life  will  awake, 
all  that  is  potential  will  become  active.  It  seems  as  though 
an  invisible  hand  were  pouring,  drop  by  drop,  into  that  deli- 
cate and  fragile  vase,  soul  and  intelligence. 

In  a  few  days  a  smile  will  come  to  animate  the  lips  of  the 
infant ;  movements  more  and  more  characteristic  will  give 
evidence  of  his  vitality  ;  they  will  express  either  his  instincts 
or  simply  his  general  need  of  activity.  Finally,  at  the  end  of 
a  few  months,  a  sort  of  prattling  —  feeble  cries  indefinitely 
repeated  —  shows  that  this  feeble  child  already  has  some 
glimmers  of  intelligence,  and  that  he  wishes  to  communicate 
them. 

We  have  often  heard  of  the  slowness  with  which  nature 
proceeds  in  organizing  the  faculties  of  the  child.  I  confess 
that  it  is  rather  the  contrary  that  impresses  me.  When  we 
think  of  the  origin  of  the  child,  that  only  a  few  months  ago 
he  had  no  formal  existence,  how  can  we  fail  to  be  astonished 
at  that  prodigy  which  is  renewed  every  day,  and  which  gives 

73 


74  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

rise  in  so  brief  a  time  to  a  new  being,  nearly  similar  in 
everything,  except  stature,  to  the  authors  of  his  life?  Espe- 
cially how  can  we  fail  to  admire  the  intellectual  progress 
which,  through  the  acquisitions  of  the  senses,  is  accom- 
plished within  a  few  years?  "The  period  in  which  the 
child  has  no  teacher,"  says  Egger,  "is  perhaps  that  in 
which  he  learns  most  and  most  rapidly.  Let  one  compare 
the  number  of  ideas  acquired  between  birth  and  the  age  of 
five  or  six,  with  those  which  he  acquires  in  the  years  follow- 
ing, and  he  will  be  astonished  at  this  great  precocity."1 

66.  SENSATIONS  AND  PERCEPTIONS. — We  assume  to  be 
known  whatever  psychology  and  physiology  teach  of  the 
organs  and  the  functions  of  the  five  senses,  —  seeing, 
hearing,  touching,  smelling,  and  tasting.  Let  us  dwell  only 
on  what  it  is  important  for  the  educator  to  know,  if  he 
would  proceed  successfully  in  the  education  of  the  senses. 

The  sensations  peculiar  to  the  five  senses  are  not  merely 
affective  perceptions,  —  that  is,  sources  of  pleasure  or  of 
pain,  —  but  they  are  also  representative  perceptions,  that 
is,  the  sources  of  images,  of  ideas,  and  of  knowledges.2 
While  the  interior  sensations,  those  which  accompany  the 
play  of  the  organic  functions,  teach  us  nothing  of  the 
nature  of  the  organs  where  they  are  developed,  the  exterior 
sensations  inform  us  of  the  qualities  of  the  objects  which 
produce  them,  and  those  objects  themselves. 

From  the  earliest  years  of  life  perception  is  quite  readily 
disengaged  from  sensation,  and  the  perception  is  already 
knowledge,  —  it  consists  essentially  in  distinguishing  the 
difference  between  objects. 

"Mind,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "starts  from  discrimination.     The  con- 

1  Egger,  Observations  sur  le  developpment  de  I'lntelligence,  1879. 

2  Rousseau  was  wrong  in  saying,  "  The  first  sensations  of  children 
are  purely  affective:  they  perceive  only  pleasure  and  pain." 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   THE   SENSES.  75 

sciousuess  of  difference  is  the  beginning  of  every  intellectual  exer- 
cise." 1 

And  at  the  same  time  that  the  mind,  through  successive 
perceptions,  discriminates  objects  from  one  another,  it  soon 
comes  to  discriminate  itself  from  these  objects.  Self- 
consciousness,  the  inner  sense,  is  inseparable  from  the 
development  of  the  external  senses. 

67.  IMPORTANCE  OF  SENSE-INTUITIONS.  —  The  notions  fur- 
nished by  the  senses  are  one  of  the  essential  elements  of 
the  human  intelligence.  It  were  an  error  to  think  that  the 
senses  do  not  give  us  ideas.  "  Before  the  age  of  reason," 
said  Rousseau  wrongly,  "  the  child  does  not  receive  ideas, 
but  images."  From  the  fact  of  being  sensible,  the  represen- 
tations of  sight  and  of  hearing  are  none  the  less  ideas. 

Doubtless  the  consciousness,  applied  to  the  interior  modi- 
"fications  of  the  self,  is  a  fruitful  source  of  knowledge ;  but 
how  much  richer  and  vaster  is  the  domain  of  exterior  per- 
ception ! 

Our  abstract  and  general  ideas  themselves  are  but  the 
derivatives  of  a  mental  effort  which  compares,  separates, 
and  unites  the  concrete  data  of  the  senses. 

Doubtless  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to  make  of  the  senses 
the  only  source  of  intellect,  as  Locke,  Condillac,  and  Come- 
nius  also  taught.2 

The  mind  has  its  own  constitution  and  its  necessary  laws ; 
natural  or  acquired,  innate  or  hereditary,  reason  exists  prior 
to  the  senses  and  governs  their  exercise ;  as,  for  example, 
when  it  obliges  us  to  admit  an  external  reality,  the  cause 
and  basis  of  sensible  representations. 

1  Alexander  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  15. 

a  "  It  is  certain,"  says  Comenius,  in  the  preface  to  the  Orbis  Pictus, 
"  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  understanding  which  had  not  before  been 
in  the  senses." 


76  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

But,  nevertheless,  the  senses  are  the  origin  of  the  most  of 
our  knowledge ;  they  enrich  the  mind  with  a  multitude  of 
notions.  It  suffices,  to  judge  of  their  importance,  to  see  to 
what  a  wretched  condition  is  reduced  the  intelligence  of  the 
unfortunates  who  have  been  deprived  of  several,  or  even  of 
a  single  one,  of  their  senses.  The  mind  is  not,  as  certain 
philosophers  have  supposed,  a  force  which  is  self-sufficing ; 
it  has  need  of  nourishing  itself  from  without,  through  an 
incessant  communication  with  nature ;  in  a  word,  it  is,  in 
large  measure,  but  the  conscious  echo  of  an  external 
world. 

68.  GENERAL  CULTURE  OF  THE  SENSES. — The  senses  are 
in  great  part  organized  and  formed  by  nature.  A  natural 
evolution  carries  forward  each  of  them  to  its  point  of  normal 
perfection.  There  is,  however,  for  the  faculties  of  sense- 
perception,  as  for  all  the  others,  an  education  proper,  a  real 
culture,  which  alone  can  secure  to  the  senses  all  the  pre- 
cision, all  the  delicacy,  of  which  they  are  susceptible. 

The  starting-point  in  this  education  of  the  senses  depends 
upon  physiology  and  hygiene.  The  integrity  and  the  health 
of  the  organs  must  be  protected.  In  the  education  of  the 
vision,  for  example,  the  first  duty  belongs  to  the  oculist. 
The  senses  are  the  instruments,  the  material  tools,  which 
must  be  kept  clean,  strong,  and  in  a  normal  condition.  But 
nature  presents,  in  the  case  of  a  great  number  of  individuals, 
grave  imperfections  which  ought  to  be  corrected  so  far  as 
this  is  possible,  and  corrected  at  first  by  physical  means. 
Some  are  near-sighted,  some  have  imperfect  vision,  some 
are  color-blind ;  some  are  hard  of  hearing,  and  some  almost 
deaf.  For  these  difficulties  medicine  and  hygiene  offer  rem- 
edies, or  at  least  palliatives. 

Sometimes  an  infirmity  of  the  senses  is  caused,  not  by 
a  defect  in  the  special  construction  of  the  organ,  but  by  a 


THE   EDUCATION   OP   THE   SENSES.  77 

general  weakness  of  the  constitution.  By  fortifying  the 
whole  body  and  the  genefal  health,  we  assure  the  health 
and  vigor  of  the  organs  of  sense-perception.  Finally,  edu- 
cation, from  this  first  point  of  view,  ought  carefully  to  avoid 
all  the  material  causes  of  the  enfeebling  of  the  senses,— 
bad  conditions  of  lighting,  for  example, — which  might  in- 
jure the  natural  and  normal  sensibility  of  vision. 

But  all  has  not  been  done  when  we  have  provided,  through 
hygiene,  for  the  health  of  the  organs  of  sense.  It  is  much 
to  have  good  tools  at  our  disposal,  but  this  is  not  enough ; 
we  must  know  how  to  use  them.  Like  all  the  faculties,  the 
senses  are  perfectible.  Between  what  they  are  naturally, 
and  what  they  can  become  by  a  methodic  and  regular  cul- 
ture, there  is  a  considerable  margin.  Exercise  is  the  great 
secret  of  this  education  of  the  senses.  It  is  by  practice  that 
the  painter  and  the  musician,  the  artisan  and  the  artist, 
learn  to  see  and  to  hear  with  a  degree  of  accuracy  and  power 
to  which  the  untaught  do  not  attain.  We  know  what  mar- 
vellous power  is  attained  by  the  hearing  of  savages  and 
huntsmen,  the  touch  of  the  blind,  and  the  sight  of  sailors. 
Laura  Bridgman,  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind,  has  succeeded 
through  touch  alone  in  distinguishing  the  colors  of  the  dif- 
ferent balls  of  yarn  or  of  silk  which  she  employs  in  her 
sewing  and  embroidery. 

Finally,  we  must  recollect  that  the  senses  are  mutually 
complementary.  Touch  corrects  the  illusions  of  sight  and 
extends  its  sphere.  Sight  illumines  and  guides  the  hearing. 
Besides  these  individual  and  special  perceptions,  natural 
perceptions,  as  the  psychologists  say,  each  sense  has  its 
acquired  perceptions,  which  it  owes  in  part  to  the  co-opera- 
tion of  the  other  senses.  Hence,  again,  the  educator  has  a 
new  occasion  for  intervention,  for  the  purpose  of  aiding  the 
senses  in  mutually  controlling  and  correcting  themselves, 
and  in  becoming  by  their  accord  the  admirable  and  infallible 
instrument  for  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  the  material  world. 


78  THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

69.  OPINION  OF  ROUSSEAU. — Rousseau  is  the  first  who 
understood  the  importance  of  the  education  of  the  senses. 

"  A  child,"  he  says,  "  is  not  so  tall  as  a  man ;  he  has  neither 
his  strength  nor  his  reason,  but  he  sees  and  hears  as  well  as  he, 
or  nearly  as  well.  .  .  .  The  first  faculties  which  are  formed  and 
perfected  in  us  are  the  senses.  These  are  the  first  that  should 
be  cultivated;  they  are  the  only  ones  that  are  forgotten,  or  that 
are  most  neglected. 

"  To  exercise  the  senses  is  not  merely  to  make  use  of  them, 
but  it  is  to  learn  to  judge  correctly  by  them ;  it  is  to  learn,  so 
to  speak,  to  feel,  for  we  can  neither  touch,  nor  see,  nor  hear, 
except  as  we  have  been  taught." 

"What  pleases  us  particularly  in  Rousseau's  thought  is  that 
he  does  not  consider  the  senses  simply  as  instruments  for 
perfecting  the  mind  ;  but  he  studies  them  in  themselves  and 
seeks  the  means  of  training  them.  It  is  not  merely  the  ed- 
ucation of  the  mind  through  the  senses  which  concerns  him, 
but  above  all  the  education  of  the  senses  themselves. 

70.  METHODS  OF  PESTALOZZI  AND  FROEBEL.  — To  Rousseau 
belongs  the  merit  of  having  recommended  theoretically  the 
education  of  the  senses,  but  to  Pestalozzi  and  to  Froebel  be- 
longs the  honor  of  having  put  it  in  practice,  of  having  intro- 
duced it  into  the  domain  of  school  work. 

According  to  Pestalozzi,  the  point  of  departure  in  all 
intellectual  education  is  to  be  found  in  the  sensations.  It 
was  through  things  themselves  that  he  wished  to  develop  the 
intelligence  of  his  pupils.  It  was  not  enough  for  him  to 
have  the  objects  seen,  but  they  must  be  touched  also ;  the 
child  turned  them  about  in  all  directions,  until  he  had 
perfectly  caught  their  form  and  observed  their  qualities. 
Pestalozzi  went  still  further ;  he  obliged  the  child  to  weigh, 
measure,  and  analyze  the  material  things  which  he  had  taken 
into  his  hands,  and  at  the  same  time  he  drilled  the  pupil  in 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   THE  SENSES.  79 

naming,  in  designating  by  the  proper  word,  the  qualities, 
the  relations,  the  dimensions  which  his  sight  or  his  hand 
had  distinguished  in  the  objects.  "See  and  name,"  was 
the  principle  of  his  elementary  method  of  instruction. 

It  is  in  the  same  spirit  that  Froebel  successively  developed 
before  the  eyes  of  the  child  the  marvels  of  the  six  gifts  ;  that 
he  first  exhibited  to  the  sight  concrete  objects,  such  as  balls 
of  colored  wool  and  geometrical  solids ;  and  that  he  taught 
him  to  distinguish  their  contents,  form,  and  material,  "in 
such  a  way,"  says  Greard,  "as  to  accustom  him  to  see, — 
that  is,  to  seize  the  appearance,  form,  resemblances,  differ- 
ences, and  relations  of  things." 

71.  THE  SPECIAL  EDUCATION  OF  EACH  SENSE. — Madame 
Necker  de  Saussure  is  not  wholly  right  when  she  requires 
that  the  child  shall  carry  forward  the  training  of  the  five 
senses  simultaneously.      In  fact,   some   of   the   senses  are 
more  precocious,  and  others  more  tardy,  in  their  develop- 
ment ;  and,  besides,  the  senses  are  of  unequal  importance, 
and,  not  rendering  the  same  services,  do  not  deserve  the 
same  attention.     Finally,  each  of  them  has  its  own  condi- 
tions and  its  own  laws.     Hence  the  educator  needs  to  study 
them  one  after  another  and  to  cultivate  them  separately, 
without,  however,  losing  sight  of  their  mutual  relations. 

72.  SMELL  AND  TASTE.  —  Smell  is  perhaps  the  one  of  all 
the  senses  that  is  developed  latest.     Rousseau  is  right  in 
claiming  that  children  remain  for  a  long  time  insensible  to 
good  and  bad  odors.     Moreover,  we  can  scarcely  understand 
why  smell  is  called  "the  sense  of  the  imagination,"  on  the 
pretext   that  odors   and    perfumes   often   recall    memories 
which  have  long  been  slumbering. 

Taste,  on  the  contrary,  just  because  it  responds  to  the 
essential  need  of  infant  life,  alimentation,  —  taste  is  very 


80  THEOEETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

early  developed.  Sensations  of  taste  would  be  the  first, 
were  they  not  preceded  by  vague  tactile  sensations.  The 
infant  at  once  recognizes  the  sweetish  taste  of  milk.  If 
he  is  offered  water,  or  milk  but  slightly  sweetened,  he 
rejects  it.  He  refers  everything  to  the  sense  of  taste,  and 
carries  all  objects  to  his  mouth. 

Smell  and  taste  are  both  inferior  senses  which  have 
scarcely  any  connection  with  the  intellectual  life.  They 
furnish  us  sensations  rather  than  perceptions.  They  are  the 
agents  of  the  physical  life  and  of  the  digestive  functions. 
They  put  us  on  guard  against  certain  dangers.  They  in- 
struct us  concerning  aliments  and  liquors.  They  are  the 
sources  of  pleasures  and  pains,  rather  than  of  knowledges 
and  ideas.  By  their  tendency  towards  excesses,  by  their 
unhealthy  stimulus,  they  may  contribute  towards  developing 
and  nourishing  evil  appetites,  such  as  gluttony  and  drunk- 
enness ;  but  the  part  they  play  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  is 
mediocre,  if  not  wholly  null. 

They  fall,  then,  chiefly  under  the  cognizance  of  moral 
education,  which  must  undertake  to  restrain  them,  to  mod- 
erate their  excesses,  and  to  repress  their  caprices,  their 
daintiness,  their  excessive  and  violent  preferences. 

"  Let  the  diet  of  the  child,"  says  Rousseau,  "  be  plain  and  simple  ; 
let  his  palate  be  made  familiar  only  with  moderate  savors,  and 
let  him  contract  no  exclusive  taste."  "  The  abuse  of  odors  and 
perfumes,"  says  Bernard  Perez,  "enervates  the  body  and  enfeebles 
the  will.  I  would  not  have  a  bouquet  in  the  infant's  chamber, 
or  perfumes  in  his  baths,  on  his  hair,  or  upon  his  garments. 
However,  I  would  have  him  very  sensitive  to  the  sweet  odors  of 
flowers."  * 

Taste  and  smell  may,  however,  render  some  services  to 
the  intelligence.  The  chemist  recognizes  a  body  by  its 

1  Bernard  Perez,  L'tfducation  des  le  berceau,  p.  49. 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   THE   SENSES.  81 

characteristic  odor ;  he  distinguishes  substances  as  sapid 
and  insipid.  The  taster  recognizes  the  vintage  and  the  age 
of  wines  simply  from  the  impression  which  they  produce 
on  his  palate.  There  is,  then,  some  interest,  from  the  intel- 
lectual point  of  view,  in  training  even  the  senses  of  smell 
and  taste,  in  rendering  them  more  clever  in  discerning 
shades  of  sensible  impressions. 

73.  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SENSE  OF  HEARING.  —  The  per- 
ceptions of  hearing  have  a  wholly  different  importance. 
Hearing  makes  us  acquainted  with  sound  and  the  different 
qualities  of  sound,  —  acuteness,  gravity,  intensity,  volume, 
timbre.  In  this  way  hearing  brings  us  into  relation  with  a 
multitude  of  objects.  But  what  is  especially  to  be  noted  is 
that  hearing  is  particularly  the  social  sense,  since  by  means 
of  it  we  hear  the  voice  of  our  fellows  and  know  their 
thoughts.  Hearing  is  also  an  artistic  sense,  since  it  makes 
possible  music,  the  most  popular,  the  most  insinuating  of 
all  the  arts. 

The  hearing  is  often  defective.  "  The  number  of  children 
who  have  imperfect  hearing  is  much  greater  than  is  com- 
monly supposed." 1 

In  many  cases  the  only  cause  of  this  weakness  is  the 
uncleanliness  of  the  ears,  and  can  easily  be  corrected ;  but 
in  other  cases  there  is  a  natural  and  organic  infirmity,  —  the 
child  confounds  certain  syllables  and  certain  words  with 
words  and  syllables  of  similar  assonance.  With  pupils  thus 
poorly  endowed  the  teacher  ought  to  be  particularly  indul- 
gent. He  ought  to  bring  them  as  near  to  himself  as  possible 
in  the  class-room,  and  should  oblige  himself  and  all  their 
companions  always  to  speak  very  distinctly. 

The  natural  education  of  the  hearing  is  relatively  rapid. 


See  the  Rapport  of  Jacoulet,  already  mentioned. 


82  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

The  infant  hears  from  the  first  day  of  its  life.  "  On  the 
thirty-sixth  day,"  says  M.  Cuignet,  "the  child  that  I  am 
observing  as  yet  recognizes  no  one  with  his  eyes,  no  matter 
who  takes  him  or  who  walks  with  him  ;  but  he  recognizes 
his  mother  by  her  voice."1  The.  slightest  sound  makes  the 
babe  tremble  in  its  cradle. 

But  what  is  slower  and  more  delicate  is  the  musical  edu- 
cation of  the  hearing.  At  first  all  noises  please  the  child. 
He  loves  noise  for  the  sake  of  noise.  In  the  matter  of 
music  he  is  no  harder  to  please  than  animals,  apes,  and 
bees.  It  seems  that  his  acoustic  sense  finds  pleasure  simply 
in  being  excited,  in  whatever  way  it  may  be.  The  more 
he  is  stunned,  and  the  more  he  stuns  others,  the  happier  he 
seems.  The  culture  of  the  musical  sense  is  then  a  necessity, 
particularly  to-day  when  singing  has  become  a  part  of  edu- 
cation, and  because  inaptitude  in  singing  is  the  result  of  a 
defective  culture  of  the  hearing. 

In  general,  in  the  education  of  the  hearing,  we  should  be 
guided  by  the  following  rules :  — 

"  For  the  hearing,  as  for  all  the  other  senses,  moderation  is 
indispensable  if  we  would  preserve  its  integrity  and  its  sensibil- 
ity. We  become  accustomed  to  noise,  it  is  true;  but  its  effect 
is  none  the  less  pernicious.  On  the  other  hand,  the  complete  ab- 
sence of  noise  gives  to  the  hearing  an  unhealthy  sensibility,  like 
that  contracted  by  the  sight  of  persons  who  have  long  been  de- 
prived of  light."2 

74.  EDUCATION  OP  THE  TOUCH. — The  general  sensations 
of  touch  are  very  early  developed,  because  the  entire  body  is 
its  organ.  At  a  very  early  period  the  infant  shows  that  it  is 
sensible  to  hard  and  rough  contacts,  to  slight  pressures,  and 
that  it  suffers  from  them.  A  sensation  of  contact  which 

1  M.  Cuignet,  Annales  d'oculistique,  Tome  LX VI.,  p.  117. 

2  Dr.  Safiray,  Dictionnaire  de  pedagogic,  art  Ouie. 


THE   EDUCATION   OF  THE   SENSES.  83 

would  be  indifferent  to  an  adult  makes  it  scowl  or  cry,  and 
the  touch  of  a  warm  and  caressing  hand  causes  it  a  very 
lively  pleasure. 

But  we  must  distinguish  the  primitive  sensation,  wholly 
passive,  of  touch  in  general,  from  the  active  sensation 
whose  essential  organ  is  the  hand.  The  infant  first  feels 
with  the  lips.  As  to  the  hand,  it  learns  rather  slowly  to 
make  use  of  it.  For  many  months  it  notices  objects  without 
making  an  attempt  to  grasp  them. 

"It  is  easy,"  says  Madame  de  Saussure,  "to  observe  the 
gropings  of  experience  in  the  manner  in  which  the  infant  learns 
to  make  use  of  touch.  This  sense  is  slow  in  obeying  the  orders 
of  the  will.  It  is  obliged,  in  some  sort,  to  receive  the  stimulus 
of  the  sense  of  sight,  whose  education  it  in  turn  perfects." 

75.  THE  CHILD'S  POWER  OF  SIGHT. — At  the  age  of 
three  or  four  years  the  child  already  astonishes  us  by  the 
admirable  precision  of  his  sight,  by  the  ease  and  deftness  of 
his  vision.  It  seems  that  he  has  looked  at  nothing,  and  yet 
he  has  seen  everything. 

The  mature  man,  and  even  the  young  man,  preoccupied 
with  thought  or  with  inner  emotion,  often  looks  only  with 
distraction  upon  things  without;  but  the  child,  free  from 
after-thoughts,  eager  and  curious,  in  the  freshness  and 
power  of  his  nascent  faculties  lets  nothing  escape  him  of  all 
that  is  presented  by  the  shifting  scenes  of  reality  ;  we  might 
say  that  his  whole  soul  is  in  his  eyes.  A  clever  observer  of 
children,  M.  Legouve,  has  called  attention  to  this  in  a 
humorous  vein:  — 

"The  child  is  all  eyes.  He  has  an  incomparable  power  of 
vision.  Compared  with  him,  we  are  blind.  Take  your  son  with 
you  into  a  chamber,  a  workshop,  or  a  palace,  and  on  coming 
out  interrogate  him.  You  will  be  amazed  at  all  he  has  seen. 
At  a  single  glance  he  has  made  an  inventory  of  the  furniture, 


84  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

the  walls,  the  objects  useful  and  ornamental.  A  professional 
could  not  have  done  this  so  quickly.  All  children  are  born 
appraisers."  1 

76.  NATURAL  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  SENSE  OP  SIGHT.  — 
But  the  child  does  not  acquire  this  marvellous  perspicacity  of 
vision  all  at  once.  The  sense  of  sight  does  not  escape  the 
law  of  natural  education  and  of  progressive  development 
which  presides  over  the  organization  of  all  the  faculties. 
The  eye  learns  to  see,  just  as  the  tongue  learns  to  speak  and 
the  legs  to  walk. 

It  would  doubtless  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the 
infant  at  the  moment  of  birth  is  but  a  little  blind  creature  ; 
but  the  truth  is  that  if  he  sees  enough  at  the  first  to  be  hurt 
by  the  light,  he  does  not  see  enough  to  distinguish  objects. 

During  the  first  days  of  his  life  the  child  is  afraid  of  the 
light.  He  is  attacked  by  a  sort  of  natural  photophobia,2  which 
is  explained  by  the  delicacy  and  imperfection  of  his  visual 
organs,  and  is  analogous  to  the  cases  of  morbid  photophobia 
caused  by  inflammation  of  the  eye  or  other  diseases.  Bring  a 
candle  near  a  new-born  child,  and  it  will  close  its  eyes,  or  at 
least  will  squint  badly.  The  eye  will  conceal  itself,  so  to 
speak,  and  will  shut  itself  up  in  the  obscure  corner  of  the 
orbit  in  order  to  escape  the  light.  But  after  a  little  time  all 
is  changed ;  the  infant  manifests  a  marked  taste,  a  sort  of 
appetite,  for  the  light.  It  will  sometimes  suffice,  to  cure  his 
crying,  to  place  a  candle  near  his  cradle.  Let  it  be  noted, 
however,  that  for  the  babe  a  few  weeks  old  the  light  ought 
not  to  be  too  intense.  That  it  may  be  endurable,  it  should 
be  soft  and  should  not  dazzle. 

But  for  some  time  the  child  enjoys  the  light,  rather  than 
perceives  it ;  he  does  not  know  immediately  how  to  determine 

i  Nos  Filles  et  nos  Fils,  p.  171. 
*  That  is,  "  fear  of  light." 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   THE   SENSES.  85 

objects.  "When  he  is  finally  in  a  state  to  determine  them, 
the  first  stage  of  progress  will  be  his  ability  to  follow  them 
with  his  sight  by  a  movement  of  the  ball  of  the  eye.  A 
second  stage  of  progress  is  his  ability  to  turn  his  head,  and 
so  to  prolong  his  attention. 

But  when  he  has  gone  so  far,  the  child  is  not  yet  in  full 
possession  of  the  faculty  of  sight.  Adult  vision  has  a  cer- 
tain sweep  in  breadth  ;  that  is,  it  embraces  a  certain  field  of 
vision  to  the  right  and  left.  Besides,  it  has  a  certain  range 
in  depth ;  it  grasps  objects  placed  before  it  at  a  greater  or 
less  distance.  Now,  it  is  easy  to  prove  that  if  we  observe 
little  children  their  vision  has  not  at  once  its  normal  width 
and  depth.  Little  children  quickly  lose  from  view  the 
objects  placed  before  them ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  if  we 
suddenly  change  to  the  right  or  left  the  object  which  they 
are  observing,  that  object  escapes  their  notice. 

In  other  terms,  their  field  of  vision  is  still  very  limited, 
both  in  depth  and  in  breadth.  Nature,  in  this  case  as  in  all 
others,  proceeds  with  perfect  art,  by  little  increments  of 
progress,  by  insensible  developments ;  she  grants  to  the 
babe  only  limited  perceptions  in  harmony  with  its  condition ; 
she  does  not  unfold  to  it,  all  at  once,  the  spectacle  of  the 
visible  universe ;  she  discloses  this  to  him  little  by  little,  with 
caution  and  discretion  ;  she  does  not  create  the  senses  and 
the  faculties  at  a  single  stroke,  but  organizes  them  little  by 
little. 

77.  IMPORTANCE  OP  THE  PERCEPTIONS  OF  SIGHT. — The 
perceptions  of  sight  are  still  more  rich,  still  more  important, 
than  those  of  hearing  and  touch.  Sight  is  particularly  the 
scientific  sense ;  it  is  this  which  reveals  to  us  the  color, 
form,  and  size  of  objects.  What  more  admirable  than  this 
"touch  at  a  distance,"  which  permits  us  to  grasp  the  con- 
tour of  the  things  in  the  midst  of  which  we  live,  and  which 


86  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

makes  it  possible  for  us  to  penetrate  even  the  immensity  of 
the  starry  heavens  ?  While  we  may  discuss  at  great  length 
the  comparative  misfortunes  of  blindness  and  deafness,  it 
seems  undeniable  that  the  blind  man  is  still  more  unfortunate 
than  the  one  who  is  deaf,  for  he  is  deprived  of  the  sight  of 
the  innumerable  beauties  of  the  universe ;  though  the  deaf 
man  is  the  more  sad,  because  less  isolated  than  the  blind 
man,  he  is  the  more  conscious  of  his  misfortune,  feels  more 
keenly  what  he  has  lost. 

Let  us  not  forget  that  sight,  like  hearing,  is  an  aesthetic 
sense,  without  which  we  could  enjoy  neither  painting,  sculp- 
ture, nor  architecture.  There  are  beautiful  colors  and  beau- 
tiful forms,  as  there  are  beautiful  sounds' ;  but  there  are 
neither  beautiful  odors  nor  beautiful  flavors.  In  a  word, 
beauty  seems  to  be  connected  only  with  the  senses  of  sight 
and  hearing. 

78.  EDUCATION  OF  THE  SIGHT. — A  complete  pedagogical 
study  of  the  sense  of  sight  would  comprise  a  considerable 
number  of  precepts,  some  relating  to  what  might  be  called 
the  education  of  the  sight,  and  others  more  directly  con- 
nected with  its  instruction. 

The  education  of  the  sight  consists  in  whatever  gives 
deftness  and  power  to  the  faculty  of  seeing.  To  this  end 
the  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  treat  it  carefully. 

"  For  the  first  months,"  says  M.  Perez,  "  the  chief  care  should 
be  to  protect  the  sight  of  the  child,  to  surround  with  safeguards 
that  weak  and  delicate  sense,  to  shield  the  eye  from  impressions 
that  are  too  intense,  from  glaring  light  and  colors,  and  to  sur- 
round the  child  and  bring  him  into  relations  with  objects  whicb, 
so  far  as  possible,  have  a  color  that  is  soothing.  .  .  .  Neither 
upon  the  child  nor  about  him  should  there  be  anything  that  is 
gaudy." 

And  it  is  no  less  necessary  to  protect  the  sight  from  all 


THE   EDUCATION   OF  THE    SENSES.  87 

the  circumstances  and  all  the  habits  which  might  injure  it, 
in  order  to  preserve  that  power  of  adaptation  and  of  accom- 
modation which  permits  the  eye  to  see  distinctly  objects 
placed  at  very  different  distances.  On  this  point  heed 
should  be  paid  to  all  the  hygienic  recommendations  relative 
to  the  faults  in  the  lighting  of  school-rooms,  to  the  vicious 
arrangement  of  seats  and  desks,  to  methods  of  writing  in- 
compatible with  the  proper  position  of  the  one  who  writes, 
to  the  premature  teaching  of  writing,  and  to  the  use  of 
books  too  finely  printed.  "The  sight  is  wantonly  abused," 
says  M.  Fonssagrives.1  M.  Hermann  Kohn  shows  that 
myopia  is  five  times  more  frequent  with  the  children  in 
towns  than  with  those  in  the  country,  because  the  sight  of 
the  first,  restricted  to  small  rooms,  cannot  acquire  the  habit 
of  extending  itself  to  a  distance. 

The  Commission  on  School  Hygiene,  appointed  by  decree 
of  January  24,  1882,  whose  reports  were  published  in  1884, 
concludes  that  myopia  in  children  should  be  regarded  as  the 
consequence  of  a  bad  posture.2  "How  many  cases  of  ac- 
quired myopia  there  are,"  says  Madame  Pape-Carpantier, 
"and  of  so-called  color-blindness,  which  are  merely  the  re- 
sult of  a  confirmed  habit  of  improper  seeing  in  the  early 
years  of  life,  and  of  the  absence  of  all  examination  with 
respect  to  colors !  For  one  real  organic  defect,  there  are 
perhaps  ten  that  might  have  been  avoided  by  the  normal  use 
of  the  sense  that  is  to-day  perverted." 

79.  INSTRUCTION  OF  THE  SIGHT. — What  we  call  instruc- 
tion of  the  sight  has  reference  to  everything  which  it  can 
be  habituated  to  discern  in  order  to  fulfil  its  office, — first 


1  L'fducation  physique  des  gar$ons,  p.  183.  We  shall  return  to 
these  questions  of  the  hygiene  of  vision  in  our  remarks  on  the 
teaching  of  reading  and  writing. 

a  See  the  Rapports  just  referred  to. 


88  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

colors,  then  forms,  and  finally  distances.  Contemporary 
educators  attach  a  great  importance,  perhaps  an  exaggerated 
importance,  to  school  discipline  in  the  distinction  of  colors ; 
but  what  is  certainly  useful  is  the  rapid  and  accurate  per- 
ception of  the  form  and  the  position  of  objects ;  that  is, 
accuracy  of  sight. 

In  order  to  acquire  this  endowment,  the  child  ought  to  be 
habituated  to  notice  a  great  number  of  objects,  and  to  notice 
them  in  different  situations.  A  graduated  series  of  little 
plays,  of  little  experiments,  of  excursions  directed  by  the 
teacher,  where  the  pupil's  attention  shall  be  called  to  distant 
objects  which  are  to  be  reached  by  gradual  approaches  ;  an 
incessant  correction  of  the  sense  of  sight  by  the  sense  of 
touch ;  the  objects  which  were  first  presented  to  the  sight 
being  finally  placed  within  the  hands  of  the  child,  so  that  he 
may  feel  and  measure  them  and  compare  appearances  with 
reality,  the  illusions  of  sight  with  the  realities  of  touch, — 
these  are  some  of  the  precautions  recommended  by  expe- 
rience. 

80.  THE  REFLECTIVE  EXERCISE  OP  THE  SENSES.  —  The 
essential  psychological  condition  for  the  normal  development 
of  perception  is  attention.  It  is  one  thing  to  see,  to  hear, 
to  touch,  and  another  to  observe,  to  listen,  to  feel. 

Care  will  then  be  taken  that  the  child  does  not  use  his 
senses  in  a  heedless  manner.  For  this  purpose  it  is  best  not 
to  present  to  him  too  many  objects  at  one  time,  or  at  least 
not  to  bring  before  his  vision  too  rapidly  too  great  a  succes- 
sion and  variety  of  objects.  His  mind  must  be  fixed  on  a 
small  number  of  things,  and  he  must  be  made  to  examine 
them  under  all  their  aspects ;  in  a  word,  his  faculty  of 
observation  must  be  called  into  play. 

81.     PEDAGOGICAL   INSTRUMENTS. — No  one    has  better 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   THE   SENSES.  89 

enforced   the   worth   of  the   education   of  the  senses  than 
Madame  Pape-Carpantier : 1  — 

"  It  is,"  she  says,  "  the  most  valuable  and  the  most  attractive 
of  all  the  teacher's  duties,  and  some  day  it  will  have  a  place  in 
the  official  programmes." 

And  in  her  enthusiasm  she  goes  so  far  as  to  dream  of  the 
invention  of  artificial  instruments  which  would  be  for  the  edu- 
cation of  the  senses  what  books  are  for  the  culture  of  the 
mind.  For  setting  an  example  she  proposes  certain  pieces 
of  apparatus  designed  to  aid  pupils  in  their  sensible  percep- 
tions, as  the  movable  color-bearer  or  spectral  top,  the  poly- 
phone,  etc. 

For  ourselves,  we  have  little  confidence  in  the  utility  of 
these  instruments  and  machines.  On  the  pretext  of  serving 
nature  we  must  not  supplant  her  and  substitute  ourselves  for 
her.  The  real  instrument  for  the  development  of  the  senses 
is  attentive  exercise,  observation. 

82.  PERCEPTION  AND  OBSERVATION.  —  Observation  might 
be  defined  as  methodical  perception,  that  prolonged  percep- 
tion which  the  attention  directs  towards  a  determined  object. 
Seeing  (voir)  is  instinctive  and  natural  vision ;  marking 
with  the  sight  (regarder)  is  attentive  and  reflective  vision ; 
observing  is  regulated  and  consecutive  vision. 

"  A  useful  book  was  written  with  the  title,  '  How  to  Observe.' 
These  three  words  might  serve  as  a  motto  to  guide  us  in  the 
most  important  part  of  our  early  education,  —  a  part,  unfor- 
tunately, only  too  much  neglected.  All  the  natural  sciences  are 
particularly  valuable,  not  only  as  supplying  the  mind  with  the 
most  rich,  various,  and  beautiful  furniture,  but  as  teaching  peo- 
ple that  most  useful  of  all  arts,  how  to  use  their  eyes.  It  is 
astonishing  how  much  we  all  go  about  with  our  eyes  open,  and 
yet  seeing  nothing.  This  is  because  the  organ  of  vision,  like 

1  Notice  aur  I'tducation  des  sens.    Paris,  1878. 


90  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

other  organs,  requires  training;  and  by  lack  of  training  and  the 
slavish  dependence  on  books  becomes  dull  and  slow,  and  ulti- 
mately incapable  of  exercising  its  natural  function.  Let  those 
studies,  therefore,  both  in  school  and  college,  be  i-egarded  as 
primary,  that  teach  young  persons  to  know  what  they  are  see- 
ing, and  to  see  what  they  would  otherwise  fail  to  see.  Among 
the  most  useful  are  Botany,  Zoology,  Mineralogy,  Geology,  Chem- 
istry, Architecture,  Drawing,  and  the  Fine  Arts.  How  many  a 
Highland  excursion  and  Continental  tour  have  been  rendered 
comparatively  useless  to  young  persons  well  drilled  in  their 
books,  merely  from  want  of  a  little  elementary  knowledge  in 
these  sciences  of  observation !  " 1 

Doubtless  the  sciences  of  observation,  as  their  name  indi- 
cates, are  the  best  discipline  for  teaching  the  art  of  observa- 
tion ;  but  long  before  the  child  can  be  initiated  into  any 
science  whatsoever,  it  is  already  possible,  with  respect  to 
everything  that  presents  itself  to  his  notice,  to  habituate 
him  to  observe,  and  to  cultivate  his  natural  curiosity. 

"The  child  is  born  with  the  desire  to  observe  and  to  know. 
The  interior  life  being  not  yet  awakened  in  him,  he  belongs 
entirely  to  the  phenomena  of  the  exterior  world.  All  his  senses 
are  on  the  alert ;  all  the  objects  that  his  sight  or  his  hand  en- 
counters attract  him,  interest  him,  delight  him." 2 

83.  OBSERVATION  IN  THE  CHILD. — Before  being  voluntary, 
the  observation  of  the  child  is,  so  to  speak,  unconscious. 
I  mean  that  he  observes  without  willing  it,  without  reflec- 
tion, stimulated  by  an  instinctive  curiosity. 

"It  is  not  through  caprice  that  the  child  is  ever  reaching  his 
hands  out  towards  the  objects  which  are  beyond  his  grasp,  and 
weeps  when  his  desires  for  them  are  refused.  At  the  age  when 
he  needs  to  amass  a  fund  of  knowledge,  the  eyes  as  yet  scarcely 
suffice  to  inform  him  of  the  angles  or  the  contours  of  these  ob- 

1  John  Stuart  Blackie,  On  Self-Cutture,  pp.  2,  3. 
8  M.  Greard,  op.  cit.,  p.  77. 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   THE    SENSES.  91 

jects;  he  must  feel  them.  .  .  .  The  breaking  of  toys  is  due  to 
the  same  system  of  observation.  The  child  has  a  thirst  to  know 
by  means  of  what  mysterious  springs  the  eyelids  of  a  doll 
close  the  eyes,  how  the  sheep  bleats,  how  the  horse  moves. 
This  is  why,  from  the  dawn  of  humanity,  the  child  has  always 
broken  his  toys." 1 

But  this  natural  curiosity,  which  is  exercised  upon  every- 
thing, may  be  deliberately  managed  by  a  skilful  teacher, 
and  directed  to  objects  which  he  deems  the  most  useful 
to  be  known ;  so  that,  while  exercising  his  powers  of  per- 
ception and  observation,  the  child  acquires  a  stock  of  neces- 
sary knowledge. 

84.  MR.  SPENCER'S  PARADOX.  —  With  the  habitual  temer- 
ity which  he  carries  into  his  assertions,  Mr.  Herbert  Spen- 
cer declares  that  success  in  everything  depends  upon  the 
power   of   observation ;    and   he   invokes   the   testimony  of 
the  naturalist,  the  physician,  the  engineer,  and   the  scien- 
tist.    Let  this  be  granted ;  but  in  pursuing  his  line  of  ar- 
gument  he   does   not   stop   till   he   falls   into   ambiguities. 
"The   philosopher,"   he   says,    "observes  the   relations  of 
things."     It   is   only   through   the   effort   of   reflection  and 
reason  that  the  philosopher  can  seize  the  relations  of  ob- 
jects and  the  laws  of  nature ;  and  to  confound  these  acts 
with  observation  is  to  play  upon  words. 

Observation  is  doubtless  the  starting-point  in  a  great 
number  of  scientific  discoveries,  but  on  the  condition  that 
it  is  made  fruitful  through  reflection.  It  is  from  within, 
not  less  than  from  without,  that  the  formation  of  mind 
must  take  place. 

85.  DANGERS  FROM  AN  ABUSE  OF  SENSE-TRAINING.  —  The 

1  Champfleury,  Les  Enfant*,  p.  227. 


92  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

importance  of  the  education  of  the  senses  must  not  make  us 
blind  to  the  dangers  which  the  mind  would  incur  from  an 
exclusive  culture  of  sense-perception. 

"  The  sight  of  scientific  phenomena,"  says  M.  Greard,  "  amuses 
children.  They  would  willingly  sacrifice  everything  else  to  it,  — 
arithmetic,  history,  grammar.  This  is  a  clear  proof  of  the  val- 
uable aid  which  can  be  derived  from  these  demonstrations  in 
giving  expansion  to  .their  opening  faculties.  Perhaps  we  may 
also  see  in  this  a  warning.  If  it  is  undoubtedly  useful  that 
children  should  find  pleasure  in  examining  the  forms  and  ex- 
terior arrangements  of  objects,  in  following  the  decomposition 
and  the  recomposition  of  a  body,  and  in  observing  in  its  natural 
manifestation,  or  its  pictorial  representation,  the  play  of  some 
great  law;  it  must  be  confessed  that,  after  a  little  time,  when 
their  senses  have  been  corrected,  sharpened,  amused,  and  trained, 
this  kind  of  study  is  for  them  less  a  labor  than  a  distraction ; 
it  occupies  them  rather  than  gives  them  exercise.  We  have 
banished  ennui l  from  our  primary  schools.  Let  us  consider 
whether  we  have  not  gone  a  little  too  far  in  dismissing  effort 
from  them." 

Let  us  not  forget  that  the  mind  ought  to  be  something 
else  than  the  /aithful  mirror  of  exterior  reality. 

86.  CONSEQUENCES  OF  A  PROPER  EDUCATION  OF  THE 
SENSES. — It  must  not  be  inferred  that  in  devoting  itself  to 
the  education  of  the  senses  education  has  in  view  only  the 
formation  of  an  animal  of  penetrating  sight  and  acute 
hearing,  simply  capable,  like  Emile  at  the  age  of  twelve, 
of  judging  of  distances,  of  handling  objects,  —  in  a  word,  of 
recognizing  himself  in  the  midst  of  the  obstacles  of  the 
material  world.  No ;  the  education  of  the  senses  is  the 
necessary  preface  to  the  education  of  the  mind.  Confusion 
too  often  glides  into  the  intelligence  under  cover  of  incom- 

1  "Ennui,  the  disease  of  unfurnished  minds." — BENTHAM. 


THE   EDUCATION   OF   THE   SENSES.  93 

plete  and  defective  perceptions.  On  the  contrary,  clear  and 
distinct  perceptions  are  solid  supports  for  the  higher  facul- 
ties of  the  intelligence  ;  and  the  clearness  of  sense-intuitions, 
which  are  the  elements  and  the  materials  of  all  the  ultimate 
constructions  of  the  intelligence,  illuminates  the  mind  as  a 
whole.  Without  an  exact  and  precise  knowledge  of  the 
visible  and  tangible  properties  of  objects,  our  conceptions 
would  run  the  risk  of  being  false,  our  deductions  defective, 
our  whole  mental  effort  sterile.  The  culture  of  the  senses  is 
not,  then,  as  Madame  Pape-Carpantier  has  justly  observed, 
"a  useless  pastime,  a  sort  of  interlude  in  serious  lessons ;" 
but  it  is  a  serious  lesson  in  itself,  the  success  of  which  in- 
terests all  the  faculties  of  the  mind. 


CHAPTEE    V. 

CULTURE  OF  THE  ATTENTION. 

87.  INNER    SENSE  OR    CONSCIOUSNESS. — We    call    inner 
sense  or  consciousness  the  knowledge  which  the  mind  takes 
of  itself  and  of  whatever  takes  place  within  itself.     Con- 
sciousness, like  an  inward  light,  illumines  and  accompanies 
all  psychological  states,  all  mental  acts.     It  is  thus  less  a 
distinct  faculty  than  a  quality  common  to  all  the  faculties 
of  the  mind,  whose  characteristic  is  inability  to  act  with- 
out knowing  that  it  acts.     In  the  last  analysis  it  is  nothing 
else   than  the  intelligence  knowing  itself  and  knowing  all 
that  takes  place  in   the   exercise   of  the   different  mental 
faculties. 

88.  DIFFERENT    DEGREES    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS. — In    the 
child    the    intelligence    or    consciousness    does    not    attain 
its   full   clearness   at  a   single   stroke.     It   passes   through 
different    stages.      Obscure     and     confused    in    the    mere 
infant,    it   informs   him   vaguely   of  whatever   takes   place 
within   him.     Little   by   little   it  becomes   more   clear   and 
more    distinct ;    it   connects   with    the   me   the    phenomena 
that  take  place  within.     Finally,  it  acquires  its  full  power 
when,  governed   by  the  will,  it   manifests  itself   under  its 
reflective  form. 

It  then  takes  the  name  of  reflection  when  it  applies  itself 
to  the  mind  itself,  and  the  name  attention  when  it  is  directed 
to  what  is  outside  of  us.     "The  term  reflection,"  says  M. 
94 


CULTURE   OF   THE   ATTENTION.  95 

Janet,  "expresses  the  return  of  the  mind  upon  itself  and 
upon  its  thought;  it  is  inward  attention."1  And  so  atten- 
tion is  outward  reflection. 

89.  EDUCATION  OF  THE  CONSCIOUSNESS.  — The  education 
of  the  consciousness  is  involved  in  the  education  of  all  the 
faculties.  The  more  we  develop  the  different  powers  of  the 
soul,  the  more  we  assure  the  clearness  and  the  strength  of 
the  perceptions  of  consciousness.2  Under  its  first  form, 
consciousness  almost  wholly  escapes  the  action  of  educa- 
tion. It  is  of  itself  and  through  the  natural  increment  of 
its  powers  that  the  soul  clarifies  itself,  so  to  speak,  and 
comes  to  render  to  itself  an  account  of  its  acts.  The  edu- 
cator need  not  interfere  to  hasten  this  natural  progress, 
which  is  due  to  growth  and  to  age. 

And,  once  developed,  the  consciousness  does  not  even 
then  permit  a  special  culture.  Its  power  is  always  measured 
by  the  degree  of  force  which  the  different  faculties  attain. 

However,  in  that  which  concerns  that  part  of  the  con- 
sciousness whose  immediate  object  is  the  we,  and  which  is 
the  basis  of  the  feeling  of  personality,  education  has  a  part 
to  play  in  fortifying  psychological  reflection  and  in  assuring 
to  the  human  personality  the  complete  possession  of  itself. 
But,  considered  in  general,  consciousness,  as  we  have  said, 
is  confounded  with  the  intelligence,  and  the  first  care  of 
the  teacher  should  be  to  assure  the  progress  of  the  intel- 

1  M.  Janet,  Cours  de  Morale.    Paris,  1881,  p.  66. 

2  In  the  early  development  of  the  spirit  we  know  the  part  played 
by  what  contemporary  philosophers  call  unconscious  impressions,  or 
what  Leibnitz  has  called  unobserved  perceptions.    Care  should  then 
be  taken  that  the  child's  surroundings  be  wholesome  and  pure,  and 
that  nothing  evil  glide  unnoticed,  so  to  speak,  into  his  soul.     Even 
before  the  awakening  of  consciousness,  there  is  a  negative  educa- 
tion which  consists  in  shielding  the  child  from  all  unwholesome  in- 
fluences. 


96  THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

ligence  by  subjecting  it  to  the  direction  of  the  will,  or,  in 
other  terms,  by  rendering  it  attentive. 

90.  ATTENTION  AND  EDUCATION.  —  "The  important  point," 
said   Condillac,   "is   to   make   the   child  comprehend  what 
attention  is."     No ;  the  important  point  is  to  teach  him  to 
be  attentive,  and  the  way  to  succeed  in  this  is,  not  to  explain 
to  him  the  theoretical  conditions  of  attention,  but  it  is  to 
know  them  himself,  so  as  actually  to  place  the  pupil  in  those 
conditions  by  presenting  him  objects  which  are  within  the 
compass  of  his  ability,  and  which  will  excite  his  interest. 

Nothing  can  be  expected  of  those  languid  or  too  mobile 
spirits  whom  no  study  interests,  no  lesson  captivates.  On 
the  contrary,  everything  is  to  be  hoped  for  from  an  attentive 
intelligence,  which  can  fix  itself  upon  the  subjects  which  it 
studies.  The  teacher  is  sure  of  success,  and  instruction 
really  begins  only  on  that  day  when  he  has  held  the  atten- 
tion of  his  pupils  for  a  certain  number  of  minutes.  If  he 
has  to  do  only  with  inattentive  auditors,  he  renews  the  toil 
of  Sisyphus  and  pours  his  knowledge  into  a  barrel  without  a 
bottom. 

91.  DEFINITION  OF  ATTENTION. — Perfect  attention,  in  its 
final  form,  is  the  characteristic  of  an  intelligence  that  is 
self-possessed,    self -governed,    and    that    applies    itself    to 
whatever  it  will.     In  a  word,  it  is  the  liberty  of  the  spirit. 
The  attentive  intelligence  is  not  at  all  at  the  mercy  of  ex- 
ternal  impressions   or    of    the   capricious   and   involuntary 
suggestions  of  the  memory  and  the  imagination.     It  volun- 
tarily devotes  itself  to  the  objects  which  it  has  chosen ;  it 
is  its  own  master. 

Attention  is  not  a  special  faculty ;  it  is  a  general  mode 
of  all  our  intellectual  operations.  It  associates  itself  with 
all  of  them ;  with  exterior  perception,  with  consciousness, 


CULTURE   OF   THE   ATTENTION.  97 

with  imagination,  with  reasoning,  and  assures  to  them  their 
maximum  of  power.  Everybody  knows  the  difference  be- 
tween seeing  and  noticing,  hearing  and  understanding, 
touching  and  feeling.  Attentive  consciousness  is  reflection, 
which  penetrates  with  a  profounder  gaze  into  the  recesses 
of  the  inner  world  of  sentiments  and  thoughts.  Progressive 
degrees  of  memory  are  directly  related  to  progressive  degrees 
of  the  attention  ;  and  the  reason  is  not  really  firm  and  strong, 
except  when  it  is  reflective,  that  is  to  say,  attentive. 

92.  GENERAL  IMPORTANCE  OP  ATTENTION. — It  is  sufficient 
to  have  defined  attention,  in  order  to  judge  of  its  influence 
and  its  effects.  The  histoiy  of  brilliant  scientific  discoveries 
and  of  the  great  works  of  human  art  is  for  the  most  part  but 
the  recital  of  the  efforts  of  the  attention.  Newton  said  that 
he  had  discovered  the  laws  of  universal  attraction,  "by 
always  thinking  on  the  subject."  Buff  on  defined  genius  as 
"a  long  patience."  In  more  modest  degrees,  all  the  results 
of  the  toil  of  thinking  are  direct  proofs  of  the  importance  of 
attention. 

But  there  is  in  some  sort  a  counter-proof ;  the  infirmities 
of  the  mind  are  connected  with  weakness  of  the  attention. 
The  idiot  and  the  imbecile  are  incapable  of  fixing  their  mind 
upon  any  given  object.  The  monomaniac  is  the  slave  of  a 
fixed  idea,  which  wholly  absorbs  him.  The  maniac,  on  the 
contrary,  in  a  single  instant  pursues  a  thousand  different 
thoughts,  powerless  to  fix  his  attention  upon  any  one  of 
them.  In  all  its  degrees,  madness  is  especially  an  in- 
capacity of  being  attentive,  of  controlling  one's  mind ;  the 
intelligence  is  no  longer  its  own  master, — as  we  say,  it 
is  alienated. 

Attention,  then,  is  the  characteristic  of  a  normal  state  of 
the  intelligence,  and,  so  to  speak,  the  health  of  the  spirit. 
So  we  need  not  be  astonished  that  certain  philosophers  — 


98  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

Laromiguiere,  for  example —  have  considered  attention  as 
the  basis  of  all  the  intellectual  faculties. 

93.  ATTENTION  IN  THE  CHILD.  —  If  this  is  so,  if  attention 
is  the  perfect  form  of  the  intelligence,  the  conscious  act  par 
excellence,  that  which  implicates  the  participation  of  the  will 
and  the  entire  personality,  it  is  evident  that  it  cannot  mani- 
fest itself  all  of  a  sudden  in  the  child,  at  the  age  when  the 
faculties  are  in  a  state  of  development. 

The  child  is  naturally  distracted,  and  distraction  is  the 
very  opposite  of  attention.  At  first  the  child  is  the  sport 
of  the  sensations,  which  come  in  succession  and  draw  him 
hither  and  thither.  A  little  further  advanced  in  age,  he  is 
at  every  moment  turned  aside  by  his  imagination,  by  his 
recollections,  by  the  incoherent  ideas  which  spring  forth, 
we  do  not  know  how,  from  his  consciousness.  His  intel- 
ligence is  almost  as  mobile  as  his  body.  It  is  dominated 
by  other  forces  ;  it  is,  so  to  speak,  in  tow  of  the  involuntary 
impressions  which  are  ever  coming  to  throw  themselves 
across  his  toil  and  his  studies.  To  call  it  back  and  fix  it  is 
a  serious  business. 

So  do  not  let  us  expect  or  demand  of  the  child  real,  abso- 
lute attention.  We  might  as  well  command  immobility  of 
a  bird ;  and  yet  it  is  necessary  as  soon  as  possible  to  make 
the  child  attentive,  for  even  the  most  elementary  instruction 
requires  this.  We  must  at  any  cost  secure  from  him  that 
effort  of  attention  which  is  so  painful  to  him,  which  seems 
so  contrary  to  his  nature,  that  concentration,  as  the  English 
psychologists  say,  so  little  consonant  with  the  natural  scat- 
tering of  his  ideas  and  with  the  volatile  mobility  of  his 
imagination. 

At  first  the  problem  seems  insoluble,  and  if  it  is  not  so 
it  is  because  there  are  certain  intermediate  degrees  which 
nature  has  provided  for,  between  the  state  of  ordinary  inat- 


CULTURE  OF  THE  ATTENTION.  99 

tention,  which  is  the  point  of  departure,  and  the  habit  of 
attention,  which  is  the  final  term  of  the  series. 

94.  INTERMEDIATE  STATES.  —  The  powers  of  the  mind  are 
not  on  the  start  what  they  will  one  day  be.  Sometimes 
even  they  are  totally  different  in  their  early  stages  from 
what  they  will  become  later  on,  and  present  characteristics 
almost  opposite  to  those  which  they  will  manifest  in  their 
mature  and  final  form. "  This  is  the  case  with  attention, 
which  may  be  defined  as  the  voluntary  mode  of  the  intel- 
ligence, but  which  at  first  is  involuntary  and  irreflective. 

Let  one  read  the  chapter  which  M.  Perez,  an  ingenious 
observer  of  children,  has  devoted  to  the  early  develop- 
ments of  the  attention,  and  he  will  be  convinced  that  the 
attention  of  the  child  is  but  the  shadow  and  the  phan- 
tom of  real  attention.1  In  the  examples  which  M.  Perez 
has  collected,  attention  is  now  confounded  with  an  impe- 
rious need,  like  that  of  the  babe  who  fixes  its  gaze  upon 
the  breast  of  its  nurse ;  now  with  a  vivid  sensation,  like 
that  of  the  infant  a  month  old,  who  is  able  to  follow  for 
three  or  four  minutes  the  reflected  light  thrown  on  a  table 
placed  near  the  window ;  and  even  with  mobility  of  im- 
pressions, as  in  the  case  of  that  little  girl  of  three  months 
who  is  represented  to  us  as  "  attentive  to  everything  that 
was  going  on  about  her,  to  all  sorts  of  sounds,  to  the 
noise  of  footsteps  in  the  room."  In  these  different  circum- 
stances in  which  the  infant  gives  proof  of  attention,  "  the 
observing  subject,"  M.  Perez  admits,  "  seems  less  to  be- 
long to  himself  than  to  belong  to  the  object  observed." 
Now  this  is  exactly  the  opposite  of  attention.  Far  from 
being  exclusively  a  sensation,  or  a  condescendence  of  the 
mind  to  the  multiplied  impressions  of  the  senses,  atten- 

1  M.  Perez,  Lea  trois  premieres  anntes  de  I'enfant. 


100  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

tion  consists  especially  in  dominating  the  sensations,  in 
order  to  follow  voluntarily  a  thought  preferred  to  all  others. 
It  is  not  the  rebound  or  the  result  of  an  excitation  from  with- 
out, but  it  proceeds  from  an  inward  effort.  As  to  "  that 
habit  of  attention,  prompt,  capriciously  distributed,  that, 
is,  indifferently  accorded  to  everything,"  it  is  indeed  the 
very  characteristic  of  infancy,  but  it  is  the  very  negation 
of  attention  proper. 

95.  THE  BEGINNING  OF  ATTENTION.  — And  yet  it  is  in 
this  way,  and   in  this  way   alone,  that  attention   makes  a 
start.     There  is  no  other  means  of  cultivating  it,  in  early 
years,  than  to  habituate  the  child  to  those  vivid,  dominat- 
ing  impressions   which  hold   and  captivate   his   mind,  and 
which  are  the  shadows  or  images  of  attention. 

When  he  has  several  times  fixed  his  sight  on  bright  col- 
ors and  brilliant  forms  which  fascinate  him,  when  he  has 
turned  his  ear  to  the  loud  voice  that  controls  him  and  the 
harmonious  sounds  that  charm  him,  he  may  be  gently  in- 
duced to  turn  his  thoughts  of  his  own  accord  to  these  ordi- 
nary objects  of  his  contemplation.  To  the  usual  excitation 
from  without  there  will  gradually  respond  a  voluntary 
movement  from  within.  To  involuntary  attention  there 
will  succeed  attention  resulting  from  his  free  will.  There 
is  no  other  secret  for  calling  the  mind  to  liberty  than  at 
first  to  imprison  it  in  continuous  and  peremptory  sensations. 
It  is  curious  to  see  how,  by  a  natural  evolution,  by  the 
mind's  native  power,  the  interior  energy  will  manifest  itself  ; 
how  the  will  by  degrees  will  insinuate  itself  into  the  habit 
of  imposed  labor  and  of  thought  held  by  constraint  upon 
the  same  point. 

96.  IMPOSED  ATTENTION. — There  is,  then,  no  other  ad- 
vice  to  give   the   educator,  for  this   early   culture   of   the 


CULTURE  OF  THE  ATTENTION.          101 

attention,  than  to  impose  on  the  child  the  prolonged 
examination  of  a  given  object.  From  that  state  which 
simulates  attention  there  will  insensibly  issue  real  attention. 
The  best  plan  will  be  to  place  the  child  in  such  conditions 
that  nothing  will  excite  distractions.1  Put  a  child  who  is 
learning  to  read  in  a  garden  with  his  primer,  and  there 
amid  the  sensations  which  eddy  about  him  it  will  be  al- 
most impossible  to  fix  his  mind.  He  will  be  continually 
interrupting  his  spelling  with  all  sorts  of  exclamations : 
"There  goes  a  butterfly!  There  flies  a  bird !  "  On  the 
other  hand,  place  the  same  child  in  a  room  scantily  fur- 
nished and  somewhat  gloomy,  where  the  solicitations  of 
sense  are  rare,  proceed  in  such  a  way  that  he  sees  only 
his  book,  and  you  will  find  that  he  will  repeat  his 
lesson  with  but  little  resistance.  Without  doubt  you 
have  not  to  do,  in  this  case,  with  a  mind  truly  attentive, 
making  a  voluntary  effort  to  follow  a  given  direction ; 
but  you  have  before  you  only  a  passive  being,  whom  you 
hold  by  artificial  means,  subject  to  a  single  sensation, 
that  of  the  syllable  which  you  are  causing  him  to  spell, 
and  who  will  escape  from  you  on  the  first  occasion,  to 
become  the  slave  of  a  new  sensation.  But  in  that  species 
of  subjection  in  which  he  is  held  by  a  single  impression 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  others,  the  mind  is  gradually  strength- 
ened. He  will  lose  the  habit  of  dissipation  and  mobility ; 
he  will  devote  himself  more  and  more,  and  with  an  ever- 
growing alacrity,  to  the  objects  of  study  which  you  pro- 
pose to  him.  After  having  allowed  himself  to  be  con- 
strained, he  will  finally  consent  to  it ;  he  will  give  his 
attention  until  at  last  he  will  of  his  own  accord  attach 
himself  to  the  objects  of  study  towards  which  his  own 

1  "  Cause  a  calm  to  reign  around  the  infant,  so  that  the  impres- 
sions he  receives  through  the  senses  may  be  distinct."  (Madame 
Necker  de  Saussure,  T.  II.,  p.  125.) 


LIBRARY 

UNTVF.RSTTV  OP 


102  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

choice  draws  him.  And  even  in  the  attention  of  the 
mature  man  there  will  always  remain  something  of  the  in- 
voluntary and  the  enforced,  the  irresistible  attraction  of  a 
favorite  thought,  of  a  study  of  predilection,  of  a  domi- 
nant taste. 

97.  OTHER    CHARACTERISTICS    OF    THE    CHILD'S  ATTEN- 
TION.— When  the   child   has   grown   and   has  reached   the 
school  age,  we  may   demand  of  him  some   degree  of   vol- 
untary  attention  and  count    on   some   effort  on  his   part ; 
but  how  many  expedients  we  must  still  employ,  not  to  weary 
his  nascent  attention,  but  to  stimulate  it  and  hold  it !     Here 
again  we  must   consult  the   nature   of  the  child  and   take 
into  account  the   special   characteristics  of  his   mind.     To 
each  one  of   these   characteristics   there  will  correspond   a 
series  of  pedagogical  precepts. 

At  first  the  limit  of  the  child's  attention  is  short ;  it 
is  soon  exhausted.  Moreover,  he  voluntarily  applies  it 
only  to  sensible  objects.  Its  power  is  still  limited,  and 
to  fixedness  of  mind  there  does  not  always  correspond 
immobility  of  body.  Finally,  in  a  general  way,  the  atten- 
tion is  weak,  and  there  must  be  a  resort  to  all  sorts  of 
stimulants  in  order  to  arouse  it  and  keep  it  at  its  work. 

98.  SHORT  DURATION   OF  ATTENTION. — We  say   nothing 
new  in  remarking  that  children  are  not  capable  of  a  long 
intensity  of  thought. 

"  Horace  Grant  has  shown  that,  beyond  from  five  to  ten  min- 
utes for  young  children,  and  from  thirty  to  forty-five  for  older 
pupils,  the  attention  is  wearied  and  intellectual  effort  comes  to 
an  end."1 

Generally  the  child  displays  his  whole  power  at  the  be- 
1  M.  Fonssagrives,  L'Education  physique  des  garfons.    Paris,  1870, 


CULTURE  OF  THE  ATTENTION.          103 

ginning  of  his  task ;  but  he  is  soon  at  the  limit  of  his 
strength,  and  needs  to  be  occupied  with  something  else,  or 
even  to  have  no  task  on  hand,  but  to  refresh  himself  with 
play  or  with  absolute  repose.  Be  careful,  then,  to  proceed 
gradually.  Let  the  lessons  be  short  at  first ;  they  will  grow 
longer  in  proportion  as  the  pupil's  power  of  attention  is 
developed.  Also  introduce  variety  into  the  exercises. 
Change  is  a  rest.  As  much  as  possible  alternate  school 
work  with  recreation,  which,  as  the  etymology  of  the  term 
indicates,  truly  remakes  or  creates  anew  (re-creates)  the 
exhausted  forces. 

99.  EXERCISE  OF  THE  ATTENTION  THROUGH  THE  SENSES.  — 
The  inability  of  the  child  to  follow  abstract  ideas  is  another 
platitude.  A  sure  means  of  making  him  inattentive,  of 
weakening  perhaps  for  life  his  power  of  attention,  is  to 
teach  him  too  early  general  truths,  rules,  formulae,  —  any- 
thing which  repels  him  because  he  does  not  comprehend  it 
easily.  General  ideas  have  no  value  for  children.  In  their 
view  the  only  realities  are  facts. 

M.  Egger  cites  a  striking  instance  of  this  inability  of  the 
child  to  comprehend  the  abstract : 

"At  the  age  of  three  and  a  half  years,  Emile,  who  was 
being  taught  to  read  the  figure  3,  the  number  of  a  house,  re- 
fused to  do  it  '  because  there  was  only  one  figure  there.' 
He  could  not  understand  how  a  single  symbol  could  indicate 
plurality." 

It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  at  first  the  child 
can  assimilate  only  knowledge  coming  through  the  senses. 
Appeal,  then,  to  the  senses,  and  so  far  as  possible  save 
beginners  from  abstractions.  One  of  the  reasons  which 
best  justify  the  use  of  object  lessons  is  that  they  are 
based  directly  on  this  fundamental  principle,  that  it  is 
best  to  exercise  the  attention  on  concrete  and  sensible 
objects  before  applying  it  to  abstractions. 


104  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

100.  EXTERIOR  SIGNS  OF  ATTENTION. — Another  charac- 
teristic of  the  child's  attention  is  that  it  is  rarely  accom- 
panied by  the  exterior  signs  which  announce  it  in  the  mature 
man.     The   thinker   who  reflects   remains  motionless,  with 
fixed  eyes  and  bowed  head.     But  observe  the  child  who  is 
repeating  his  lesson.     It  is  impossible  for  him  to  stand  still ; 
his  eyes  wander  to  the  ceiling,  to  the  right,  to  the  left ;  his 
legs,  his  arms,  his  whole  body,  is  in  motion.     I  knew  a  little 
girl  who  could  not  learn  to  read,  save  on  the  condition  of 
sewing  at  the  same  time ;  and  it  was  a  pleasure  to  see  her 
mechanically  drawing  her  needle  with  her  little  fingers,  while 
she  was  at  the  same  time  spelling   out  the  words  of   her 
primer  placed  on  the  knees  of  her  mother.     In  a  word,  the 
child  has  need  of  movement,  even  when  he  is  studying.     In- 
tellectual  activity  does  not  suspend   his  physical  activity. 
The  attention  of  which  he  is  capable  does  not  wholly  ab- 
sorb him. 

101.  NEED  OF  MOVEMENT. — This  being  true,  it  will  be 
best  to  make  provision  for  this  need  of  movement,  and  not 
to  require  of  the  child  an  absolute  immobility.     Let  us  not 
demand  of  him  what  is  impossible  at  his  age,  that  during 
the  time  he  spends  in  school  he  shall  be  a  thinking  statue. 
Let  us  not  require  of  him  the  exterior  signs  of  attention, 
provided  he  be  really  attentive. 

Let  us  the  rather  seek  for  methods  which,  while  furnishing 
occasion  for  gratifying  his  need  of  physical  movement,  at 
the  same  time  aid  the  effort  of  thinking.  The  child  learns 
to  write  more  easily  than  to  read,  because  the  task  of 
writing  calls  his  hand  into  use,  and  consequently  gives 
him  greater  pleasure. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  them,  the  phonomimic  proc- 
esses have  the  advantage  of  introducing  gestures  and  move- 
ments into  the  study  of  the  alphabet,  and  so  of  breaking 


CULTURE   OF   THE   ATTENTION.  105 

up  the  immobility  which  is  so  unendurable  to  children. 
One  of  the  merits  of  FroebeFs  system  is  that  it  calls  into 
exercise  at  the  same  time  the  senses  and  the  instinct  to 
movement. 

It  would  be  dangerous,  however,  to  yield  too  much  to  the 
physical  petulance  of  the  child.  The  order  of  the  school 
could  not  easily  accommodate  pupils  ever  on  the  move, 
whose  notion  would  be  to  learn  to  read  while  skipping  about 
the  room.  Moreover,  if  the  child  were  not  guarded  in  this 
respect,  he  would  be  allowed  to  contract  uncomely  habits, 
disagreeable  tricks.  And  Miss  Edgeworth,  who  seems, 
however,  to  have  overestimated  the  extent  of  this  danger, 
writes  not  without  reason, — 

"If  a  boy  could  not  read  without  swinging  his  head  like  a 
pendulum,  we  should  rather  prohibit  him  from  reading  for  some 
time,  than  suffer  him  to  grow  up  with  this  ridiculous  habit."1 

1 02.  STIMULANTS  OF  ATTENTION.  — ' '  The  interest  inspired 
by  the  subject  itself,"  an  educator  has  said,  "is  a  unique 
talisman  for  developing  the  attention."  How  to  create 
interest,  —  such,  consequently,  ought  to  be  the  principal 
anxiety  of  the  teacher. 

Real  attention,  like  affection,  does  not  permit  constraint. 
It  bestows  itself  on  those  who  know  how  to  gain  it.  Hence 
nothing  is  more  important  than  the  choice  of  the  subjects  to 
be  taught,  and  particularly  the  manner  of  teaching  them. 

Without  doubt  we  must  guard  against  the  dangers  of  an 
education  that  is  too  compliant,  too  easy,  which  makes  an 
abuse  of  what  is  diverting,  and  which  excludes  effort.  We 
should  not  forget,  however,  that  pleasure  is  the  most  pow- 
erful stimulant  to  effort.  So  far  as  possible,  let  us  remove 
the  obstacles  that  are  upon  the  route  of  this  attention  still 

1  Practical  Education,  Vol.  I.,  p.  106. 


106  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

wavering,  which  will  not  keep  its  track  unless  it  finds  what 
is  agreeable  there. 

Nothing  is  indifferent  to  what  can  contribute  towards 
making  instruction  attractive.  The  talent  of  teachers  will 
always  be  the  surest  pledge  of  the  pupil's  attention.  But  in 
default  of  talent,  simplicity,  clearness,  cleanness  of  exposi- 
tion, will  have  a  happy  effect  on  the  dispositions  of  those 
who  hear.  Even  the  tone  of  voice  and  the  attitude  of  a 
teacher  who,  as  has  been  said,  knows  his  business,  who 
gives  proof  of  the  interest  which  he  takes  in  those  whom  he 
instructs, — these  things  will  contribute  towards  exciting  the 
interest  of  those  who  learn  and  listen. 

It  is  not  required  to  make  everything  agreeable  and 
attractive ;  but  it  is  to  be  recollected  that  only  that  which 
affects  the  sensibility,  that  which  is  agreeable  or  painful, 
can  with  certainty  arouse  the  attention,  and  that  only  that 
which  is  agreeable  can  hold  it. 

103.  CURIOSITY. — In  this  search  for  the  attractive  and 
the  interesting  the  educator  is  aided  by  the  very  nature  of 
the  child.  In  fact,  the  mind  of  the  child  is  far  from  being 
repugnant  to  attention. 

Curiosity,  that  grand  mobile  of  the  intelligence,  which 
Fenelon  has  admirably  defined  to  be  a  propensity  of  nature 
which  goes  in  advance  of  instruction,  —  curiosity,  if  skilfully 
excited  and  duly  satisfied,  —  will  be  the  natural  source  of 
attention. 

A  bishop  of  the  nineteenth  century,  less  liberal  than 
Fenelon — Dupanloup  —  has  only  harsh  words  for  the  curi- 
osity of  the  child. 

"  The  soul,  trivial,  dissipated,  curious,  open  on  all  sides,  lets 
everything  slip  away  and  keeps  nothing.  No  serious  work  is 
possible  with  it  or  in  it." l 

1  Duranloup.  De  I'Education,  Tom.  III.,  p.  465. 


CULTURE  OF  THE  ATTENTION.          107 

Curiosity,  which  is  in  fact  the  characteristic  of  a  mina 
open  on  all  sides,  impatient  to  know,  ardent  for  research,  is, 
on  the  contrary,  whatever  Dupanloup  says  of  it,  a  precious 
inclination,  a  happy  aptitude,  which  it  is  only  needful  to 
know  how  to  employ  with  skill  and  discretion.  It  is  a  sort 
of  intellectual  appetite,  which  should  be  furnished  only 
with  wholesome  aliment. 

Happy  the  teachers  who  have  to  do  with  intelligences 
naturally  curious !  But  especially  happy  are  those  who 
know  how  to  excite  curiosity  and  to  keep  it  active.  For 
this  purpose  we  must  skilfully  appeal  to  the  tastes  of  the 
child  and  favor  them,  yet  without  overtaxing  them. 
"Eagerness  to  derive  advantage  from  a  taste,"  says 
Madame  Necker  de  Saussure,  "is  often  the  cause  of  our 
killing  it." 

"The  manner  in  which  the  child  is  instructed,"  says  M.  La- 
combe  in  the  same  vein,  "  necessarily  has  the  disadvantage  of 
preceding  curiosity,  of  preventing  its  rise,  or  at  least  of  sud- 
denly arresting  its  movements.  In  fact,  what  do  we  do?  We 
take  a  child,  set  him  on  a  bench,  and  teach  him  off-hand  a 
multitude  of  things  of  which  he  has  never  observed  the  exist- 
ence, which  he  did  not  anticipate,  and  which  consequently  he 
could  not  desire  to  know.  We  extinguish  his  curiosity  before  it 
had  a  chance  to  be  aroused.  As  to  the  things  of  which  he  has 
been  able  to  catch  some  glimpse,  and  which  perhaps  have  puz- 
zled him,  we  bring  them  before  him  all  at  once,  thoroughly, 
and  with  greater  detail  than  he  desires.  We  overwhelm  his 
curiosity  almost  before  it  is  born.  We  teach  him  so  many 
things  by  compulsion  which  he  no  longer  has  the  least  desire 
to  know." 

Then  let  us  manage  the  curiosity  of  the  child.  Let  us 
not  smother  it  by  satiating  it  too  soon.  Let  us  reply  to 
his  questions,  as  Locke  recommends ;  but  let  us  also  allow 
hitn  the  privilege  of  seeking  for  himself,  by  personal  obser- 
vation, the  satisfaction  which  he  desires.  Curiosity  cannot 


108  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

truly  become  the  germ  of  attention,  unless  it  is  in  part 
handed  over  to  itself,  unless  it  is  not  too  quickly  satisfied, 
unless  we  give  it  time  to  put  forth  an  effort  after  the  truth. 

104.  EFFECTS   OF   NOVELTY   UPON   ATTENTION.  —  One   of 
the  best   means  of   exciting   the   curiosity,  and   hence   the 
attention,  is  to  present  to  the  child  objects  which  are  new. 
Contrast  wakes  up  the  mind,  but  on  one  condition,  —  that 
it  be  not  too   violent,  and   that  the  new  study   do  not  in- 
troduce the   child  into   a  world  absolutely   strange   to   his 
previous  experiences.     In  subjects  entirely  new,  says  Miss 
Edgeworth,  we   make   superabundant   efforts   of   attention, 
and  so  weary  ourselves  without  profit. 

"Who  does  not  know  by  experience  that  the  beginning 
of  a  science,  notwithstanding  the  attraction  of  novelty, 
is  particularly  painful?  In  order  to  reach  the  truth  we 
must  reconcile  and  unite  into  one  the  two  proverbs, 
"Wholly  new,  wholly  beautiful!"  and,  "It  is  only  the 
first  step  which  costs  !  " 

105.  EFFECTS  OF  VAKIETY. —  It  is  less  the  novelty  than 
the  variety  which  is  of  importance  in  the  education  of  the 
attention. 

An  alternation  of  occupations  and  exercises  animates  a 
class.  It  is  necessary  to  know  how  to  pass  from  expo- 
sition to  interrogation,  from  one  kind  of  labor  to  another. 
The  reason  of  this  is  that  these  different  exercises  are 
addressed  to  faculties  somewhat  different.  When  one  fac- 
ulty is  wearied  it  is  necessary  to  grant  it  some  respite 
and  to  make  an  appeal  to  a  neighboring  faculty.  The 
mind  of  the  child,  moreover,  is  eager  for  change.  Often 
a  simple  change  in  tone,  a  different  intonation  in  the 
voice  of  the  teacher,  suffices  to  revive  the  attention  which 
was  beginning  to  drowse.  Nothing  is  so  difficult  to  follow, 


CULTURE  OF  THE  ATTENTION.          109 

to  listen  to  with  attention,  as  a  monotonous  discourse  de- 
livered without  inflections. 

106.  FEW  THINGS  AT  ONCE.  —  Our  anxiety  to  vary,  to 
diversify  instruction,  need  not  cause  us  to  fall  into  con- 
fusion. A  multiplicity  of  subjects  disconcerts  the  atten- 
tion, rather  than  aids  it. 

"He  would  be  a  foolish  teacher,"  says  Mr.  Sully,  "who  gave 
a  child  a  number  of  disconnected  things  to  do  at  a  time,  or 
who  insisted  on  keeping  his  mind  bent  on  the  same  subject  for 
an  indefinite  period."  1 

We  do  not  hold  the  attention,  or  at  least  we  weary 
and  overdrive  it  in  a  way  to  make  its  efforts  useless, 
when  we  present  to  it  too  many  subjects  at  once.  We 
distrust  verbose  teachers  whose  thought  overflows  its  limits 
and  whose  words  succeed  one  another  with  an  extreme 
volubility.  No  durable  effect  nor  profound  impression  is 
to  be  expected  from  their  lectures.  The  pupil,  like  the 
teacher,  reaches  the  end  of  such  an  oratorical  race,  out 
of  breath.  The  state  of  mind  into  which  the  erudition  and 
precipitate  delivery  of  the  teacher  plunge  the  pupil  recalls 
the  consternation  of  those  Esquimaux  whose  history  is 
given  by  Miss  Edge  worth. 

Newly  arrived  in  London,  they  had  visited  in  one  day 
all  the  monuments  of  the  capital,  under  the  conduct  of  a 
guide  who  was  in  too  much  of  a  hurry.  On  their  return, 
when  they  were  asked  what  they  had  seen,  they  did  not 
know  what  to  say.  It  was  with  difficulty  that  one  of 
them,  repeatedly  urged  to  speak,  and  finally  rousing  him- 
self from  his  torpor,  could  say  while  shaking  his  head, 
"Too  much  smoke,  —  too  much  noise, — too  much  houses, 
—  too  much  men, — too  much  everything!"3 

1  Elements  of  Psychology,  p.  104. 

»  Practical  Education,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  98,  99. 


110  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

107.  EXTERNAL  CONDITIONS  OF  ATTENTION. — It  is  dan- 
gerous, says  Miss  Edgeworth,  to  employ  stimulants  foreign 
to  the  subject  studied.  So  far  as  possible,  the  interest 
should  certainly  be  made  to  come  from  the  study  itself,  and 
set  in  motion  the  inner  springs  of  the  attention.  This, 
however,  is  not  a  reason  for  disdaining  the  aid  which  can 
come  from  without,  nor  for  disregarding  the  importance 
of  the  material  conditions  in  which  the  child  may  be  placed. 

The  following,  according  to  M.  Breal,  are  some  of  these 
conditions : 

"So  far  as  possible  the  teacher  should  keep  his  position, 
holding  the  class  under  his  eyes  and  requiring  that  all  eyes 
should  be  turned  towards  him.  The  instruction  is  not  to  begin 
till  all  the  children  have  taken  an  erect  and  composed  attitude. 
A  rap  on  the  table  or  a  word  agreed  upon  is  the  signal  that 
the  recitation  is  to  begin.  The  questions  should  be  addressed 
to  th'e  class  as  a  whole;  and  so  the  teacher  will  always  first  ask 
the  question,  and  then  will  allow  the  pause  necessary  for  find- 
ing the  reply;  and  only  then  will  he  name  the  pupil  who  is  to 
reply.  If  the  pupil  begins  by  trying  to  find  the  reply  after  he 
has  been  called  on,  it  is  a  proof  of  inattention.  If  the  response 
made  by  a  pupil  is  correct,  it  may  be  demanded  again  of  a 
fellow-pupil.  If  it  is  faulty,  it  should  be  corrected  by  him. 
The  important  parts  of  the  lesson  are  repeated  in  concert  by 
the  whole  class.  As  soon  as  inattention  appears,  the  teacher 
stops.  A  means  of  reanimating  the  class,  but  a  means  which 
should  not  be  abused,  is  to  call  up  the  class  and  reseat  it  at  a 
word  of  command.  The  pupils  should  always  respond  -in  a  very 
loud  voice;  but  the  teacher  may  speak  in  a  moderate  tone.  The 
pupil's  ear  soon  becomes  accustomed  to  explosions  of  voice,  and 
then  they  are  good  for  nothing."  1 

To  these  precautions  there  must  be  added  others  which 
experience  suggests.  Attention  varies  with  the  hours  of 
the  day,  with  the  days  of  the  week,  and  with  the  inter- 

1  Dictionnaire  de  pedagogic,  art.  "Attention." 


CULTURE   OF  THE   ATTENTION.  Ill 

val  which  separates  work  and  the  taking  of  food.  Atten- 
tion is  stronger  in  the  morning  class  than  in  the  afternoon 
class,  and  stronger  during  the  first  hours  of  the  session 
than  during  the  last.  A  wise  teacher  will  take  account 
of  all  these  differences,  in  order  to  regulate  the  order  of 
studies.  He  will  begin  with  the  exercises  that  are  the  most 
difficult,  and  will  postpone  to  the  end  of  the  session  those 
which  require  the  least  effort. 

108.  DISTRACTIONS  NOT  TO  BE  TOLERATED. — The  play  of 
an  intellectual  faculty    can  be    truly    assured  only    by  re- 
pressing  the   faults   which   are   opposed  to   it.     We   must 
then   make   war   against  distraction   at  all   hazards ;    and 
after  having  done  everything  to  correct  it  Jby  mild  means, 
we  must  resort  even  to  punishments  in  order  to  suppress  it. 

"  Distractions,"  says  Ka^nt,  "  ought  never  to  be  tolerated,  at 
least  in  school,  for  they  end  by  degenerating  into  habits. 

"The  finest  talents  are  lost  in  a  man  who  is  subject  to  dis- 
tractions  Inattentive  children  only  half  hear,  reply 

wholly  at  random,  and  do  not  know  what  they  read." 

109.  CASES   WHERE  ATTENTION   is   IN   REVOLT. — Defec- 
tive attention  comes   either  accidentally   from  passing   cir- 
cumstances, which  it  is  relatively  easy  to  modify,  or   from 
the  general  indifference  of   a  mind  at  all  times   incapable 
of  becoming  fixed. 

In  the  first  case  the  remedies  to  be  employed  will  be 
but  the  application  of  the  recommendations  already  given, 
which  corisist  in  placing  the  mind  in  the  conditions  most 
favorable  for  the  development  of  the  attention. 

These  rules,  moreover,  ought  to  "be  applied  with  care, 
while  taking  into  account  the  exceptions  to  which  they  are 
subject.  Thus,  it  is  a  general  law  that  the  pupil's  attention 
is  particularly  strong  at  the  beginning  of  the  lesson,  when 


112  THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

it  has  not  yet  been  wearied.  And  yet  who  has  not  noticed 
that  the  child  has  some  difficulty  in  making  a  start?  Gen- 
erally, when  a  child  begins  his  lesson,  he  is  embarrassed, 
and  it  requires  several  minutes  to  recover  himself,  to  re- 
arrange the  dispersed  forces  of  his  mind.  At  first  he  is 
restive,  like  a  horse  which  must  be  whipped  to  a  start. 

The  situation  is  more  serious  when  we  have  to  do  with 
natures  wholly  sterile,  and  when  inattention  is  the  sign  of  a 
general  indifference  of  the  mind.  Locke  says  this  indif- 
ference of  disposition  is  the  worst  fault  that  can  manifest 
itself  in  a  child,  and  the  most  difficult  to  correct,  because  it 
has  its  source  in  the  constitution. 

But  in  truth  this  incurable  inattention  is  very  rare.  The 
more  often  the  child,  even  the  most  inattentive  in  class, 
because  the  lessons  which  he  receives  there  have  no  attrac- 
tion for  him,  recovers  all  his  ardor  and  all  his  energy,  either 
in  his  play  or  in  a  favorite  occupation.  It  is  necessary,  then, 
to  observe  his  character  with  care.  If  he  is  indifferent  in  all 
his  actions,  there  is  little  hope  in  the  case ;  but  if  there  are 
things,  whatever  they  may  be,  which  attract  his  preference, 
and  which  he  does  with  pleasure,  take  care  to  cultivate  this 
particular  taste  ;  make  use  of  it  to  exercise  his  activity  and 
to  secure  his  attention.  Once  fixed  and  developed  on  one 
point,  the  attention  will  radiate  upon  others,  and  gradually 
extend  itself  to  the  studies  which  had  at  first  repelled 
him. 

110.  MORAL  CONSEQUENCES  OF  DEFECTIVE  ATTENTION. — 
It  is  not  only  in  study,  in  intellectual  labor,  that  attention  is 
profitable.  The  conduct  of  life  and  the  virtues  of  character 
have  no  less  need  of  it  than  excellences  of  the  intelligence 
have.  Defective  attention  in  practical  life  is  the  synonym  of 
thoughtlessness  and  heedlessness.  To  be  habitually  atten- 
tive is  not  only  the  best  means  of  learning  and  progressing 


CULTURE   OF  THE   ATTENTION.  113 

in  the  sciences,  and  the  most  effective  prayer  which  we 
can  address  to  the  truth  in  order  that  it  may  bestow 
itself  upon  us ;  but  it  is  also  one  of  the  most  precious 
means  of  moral  perfection,  the  surest  means  of  shunning 
mistakes  and  faults,  and  one  of  the  most  necessary  elements 
of  virtue. 


CHAPTEE  VI. 

CULTUKE  OF  THE  MEMORY. 

111.  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  MEMORY. — There  is  no  occa- 
sion to  speak  at  length  on  the  utility  of  memory.  Because 
an  abuse  was  once  made  of  it,  because  the  other  faculties  of 
the  mind  were  wrongly  sacrificed  to  it  in  systems  of  educa- 
tion in  which  the  instruction  was  exclusively  confided  to  it, 
educators  have  presumed  to  decry  it,  to  hold  it  in  suspicion, 
and  to  treat  it  almost  as  an  enemy.  Have  they  thought 
what  education  would  become  without  memory  ?  Have  they 
reflected  that  there  is  not  a  moment,  so  to  speak,  when 
instruction  can  do  without  its  aid?  It  envelops  and  ac- 
companies the  other  faculties,  and  supplies  them  all  with 
aliment. 

"Memory,"  said  Pascal,  "is  necessary  to  all  the  opera- 
tions of  spirit." 

"Without  memory,"  wrote  Guizot,  "the  noblest  faculties 
remain  useless."  The  moral  life  itself,  as  well  as  the  intel- 
lectual life,  reposes  upon  memory,  and,  as  Chateaubriand 
says,  "the  most  affectionate  heart  would  lose  its  tenderness 
if  it  no  longer  recollected." 

Surely  to-day  no  one  any  longer  allows  the  memory  to 
exercise  over  the  mind  a  domination  that  belongs  only  to  the 
judgment  and  to  personal  reflection.  For  the  memory,  as 
for  the  other  powers  of  the  soul,  an  exclusive  culture  is 
dangerous ;  but  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  abjure  memory, 
because  an  abuse  has  been  made  of  memoriter  recitations,  as 
114 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  115 

to  exclude  reasoning  because  an  unwarranted  use  has  been 
made  of  the  syllogism.  Infinitely  useful  for  all  the  purposes 
of  practical  life,  memory  is  at  the  same  time  the  most  val- 
uable of  pedagogical  instruments.  There  is  not  a  faculty 
whose  services  the  educator  has  more  frequent  occasion  to 
call  to  his  aid ;  not  one  which  he  ought  more  earnestly  to 
seek  to  develop  and  train,  in  view  of  a  preparation  for  life. 
It  is  the  direct  source  of  much  of  our  knowledge,  and  the 
guardian  of  it  all.  Mr.  Bain  does  not  hesitate  to  say  that  it 
is  "the  faculty  that  most  of  all  concerns  us  in  education."1 

112.  MEMORY  IN  THE  CHILD. — It  is  precisely  at  the  age 
when  everything  is  to  be  learned,  that  the  memory  is  the  most 
naturally  strong.  Educators  grant  with  one  accord  that 
childhood  is  the  privileged  period  of  memory.  Mr.  Bain 
estimates  that  the  period  in  which  the  "plasticity  of  the 
brain"  and  the  power  of  mental  acquisition  are  at  their 
maximum,  extends  from  the  sixth  to  the  tenth  year.  In 
general,  the  child  is  so  happily  endowed  in  respect  of  memory 
that  he  retains  words  and  phrases  which  have  no  meaning 
for  him,  or  even  which  have  no  meaning  whatever. 

Memory  is  dependent  in  great  part  on  the  vital  forces  and 
the  nervous  system.  In  the  child,  whose  brain  is  increasing 
in  size  from  day  to  day,  whose  nerves  vibrate  with  an  energy 
which  belongs  only  to  forces  still  young  and  plastic-,  whose 
sensibility  has  lost  nothing  of  its  freshness  and  primitive 
vivacity,  the  memory  ought  necessarily  to  develop  with  a 
marvelous  facility.  Later,  in  the  adult,  in  the  mature  man, 
the  reflective  powers  of  the  mind  will  come  to  aid  the 
memory  ;  but  they  will  never  succeed  in  equaling  that  spon- 
taneous memory  of  early  years,  open  to  all  impressions,  the 
natural  and  easy  product  of  the  young  and  still  unemployed 
organs. 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  20. 


116  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

Moreover,  the  power  of  the  child's  memory  derives  ad- 
vantage from  the  weakness  and  inactivity  of  the  other 
faculties.  The  mind  is  still  unoccupied  ;  consequently  it  fills 
itself  without  effort.  Later  preoccupations,  cares,  and  per- 
sonal reflections  will  more  or  less  obstruct  the  road  to  im- 
pressions from  without.  New  memories  will  have  difficulty 
in  finding  a  place  in  the  intelligence  already  encumbered 
with  old  memories.  They  will  be  jumbled  and  confounded 
in  the  mind,  like  new  characters  which  we  would  engrave  on 
paper  already  covered  with  writing.  The  memory  of  the 
child  is  a  white  page  on  which  everything  is  easily  impressed, 
a  clean  mirror  in  which  everything  is  reflected. 

113.  OPINIONS  OF  ROUSSEAU  AND  MADAME  CAMPAN. — 
What  shal]  we  think,  then,  of  the  opinion  of  certain  educa- 
tors, according  to  whom  the  child,  at  least  the  young  child, 
has  no  real  memory  ? 

"Although  memory  and  reason  are  two  different  faculties," 
wrote  Rousseau,  "  the  one  is  never  really  developed  without  the 
other.  .  .  .  Children,  incapable  of  judging,  really  have  no  mem- 
ory." ! 

And  on  her  part  Madame  Campan  declares  that  "the 
memory  is  not  developed  till  the  age  of  three  years."2 

It  suffices  to  study  the  opinion  of  Rousseau  closely,  to  be 
convinced  that  the  disaccord  with  him  is  simply  apparent, 
that  it  comes  from  a  misunderstanding  of  terms.  The 
memory  which  Rousseau  denies  to  the  child  is  that  of  abstract 
ideas ;  he  is  the  first  to  accord  to  the  child  a  memory  of 
sounds,  forms,  and,  in  general,  of  all  the  sensible  notions. 

As  to  the  assertion  of  Madame  Campan,  it  has  reference 
to  this  fact  of  general  observation,  that  the  mature  man 

1  Emile  (Boston,  1885),  pp.  78,  79. 

2  De  I'Education,  I.,  III.,  Ch.  I. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  117 

does  not  recall  the  events  of  the  first  two  or  three  years  of 
his  life.  These  first  years  are  to  us  as  though  they  had  not 
been  ;  a  black  night  covers  them  over  in  our  consciousness, 
and  the  darkness  is  unbroken  save  by  a  few  gleams,  as  by 
the  remembrance  of  some  grave  accident  or  of  some  catas- 
trophe. Leibnitz  cites  the  case  of  a  child  who  became  blind 
at  the  age  of  two  or  three,  and  after  that  recalled  none  of 
his  visual  perceptions.1 

Does  this  mean  that  even  during  those  years  at  the  begin- 
ning of  life  when  the  consciousness  is  still  obscure,  the 
child's  memory  does  not  act,  does  not  acquire?  It  would 
suffice,  to  refute  Madame  Campan,  to  recall  the  fact  that  at 
the  age  of  three  years  the  child  generally  knows  how  to 
speak,  and  that  the  knowledge  of  words  and  the  mother 
tongue  supposes  a  considerable  display  of  memory.  Only, 
the  first  acquisitions  of  the  memory  are  weak  and  fragile ; 
they  need  to  be  fixed  and  fortified  by  a  renewal  of  the  same 
impressions,  like  delicate  sketches  over  which  the  brush 
should  pass  several  times,  in  order  to  hold  the  fugitive  colors, 
always  ready  to  be  effaced. 

114.  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  INFANT  MEMORY. — The  child's 
memory  has  its  own  good  qualities,  and  also  some  defects. 

The  first  of  the  good  qualities,  in  children  well  endowed, 
is  a  rare  power  of  acquisition.  While  the  tired  memory  of 
the  old  man  takes  delight  in  languidly  calling  up  the  im- 
ages of  past  times,  that  of  the  child  is  always  in  move- 
ment, always  in  quest  of  new  knowledge,  just  as  easily 
acquired  as  eagerly  sought,  for  the  child  sees  everything, 
hears  everything.  Nothing  escapes  his  young  and  active 
senses.  He  distinguishes  objects  and  persons.  He  has  a 
marvelous  aptitude  for  retaining  words  and  learning  lan- 

1  Leibnitz,  Nouveaux,  Essais  sur  I'entendement,  Liv.  I.,  Ch.  III. 


118  THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

guages.  In  certain  conditions  he  will  learn  two  or  three 
at  once.  What  the  adult  and  the  mature  man  will  accom- 
plish only  at  the  cost  of  painful  labor,  at  the  time 
when  the  jaded  memory  has  come  to  rebel  against  the 
registration  of  new  ideas,  the  child  will  do  with  ease, 
and  without  giving  a  thought  to  the  work. 

Another  characteristic  of  the  child's  memory  is  the  lit- 
eral precision,  the  vigorous  exactness  of  his  recollection. 
M.  Legouve  justly  compares  the  child  to  an  appraiser  who 
notes  everything,  who  omits  no  detail.  With  a  punctil- 
iousness worthy  of  being  quoted  as  a  model  for  an  histo- 
rian, the  child  recalls  the  least  particularities  of  things. 
When  we  relate  to  him  a  fable  or  a  story  which  he  knows, 
do  not  imagine  that  you  can  change  a  single  particular,  a 
single  word,  without  hearing  his  cries  and  protestations : 
"That  is  not  it!  " 

On  the  other  hand,  the  memory  of  the  child  has  weak- 
nesses which  only  progress  in  age  can  correct.  It  fails 
especially  in  this,  that  it  is  but  little  qualified  to  give  an 
exact  location  in  time  of  the  recollections  which  he  has 
acquired.  The  complete  memory  supposes  an  appreciation 
of  duration  of  which  the  child  is  incapable,  because  this 
appreciation  requires  the  co-ordination  of  recollections. 
Who  has  not  heard  children  of  two  or  three  years  of  age 
relate  as  an  event  of  yesterday  a  transaction  which  they 
witnessed  several  months  before  ?  Too  often  recollections 
float  in  the  mind  of  the  child  like  disconnected  pictures  or 
pictures  detached  from  their  frame. 

115.  CULTURE  OF  THE  MEMORY. — Montaigne  made  the 
just  remark  that  we  are  most  often  engaged  in  furnishing 
the  memory,  but  that  we  forget  to  form  it.  The  essen- 
tial thing,  in  fact,  is  not  merely  that  the  child  should 
leave  school  with  his  mind  well  garnished  with  recollec- 


CULTURE    OF   THE    MEMORY.  119 

tions  and  facts ;  it  is  also  important  that  he  have  at  his 
disposal  a  flexible  and  strong  memory,  in  a  condition  to 
be  still  more  enriched,  to  appropriate  to  itself  new  ideas, 
and  to  adapt  itself  to  the  requirements  of  life. 

There  are,  then,  two  distinct  aims  in  the  culture  of  the 
memory.  First,  it  must  be  made  to  acquire  the  most 
knowledge  possible,  which  is  the  object  of  the  whole 
course  of  instruction.  In  the  second  place,  it  must  be 
strengthened  and  developed  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  faculty 
of  the  mind.  This  no  doubt  results  in  part  from  the 
instruction  itself,  but  it  also  requires  some  special  pre- 
cautions, the  sum  of  which  constitutes  what  may  be 
called  the  education  proper  of  the  memory. 

116.  Is  THIS  NECESSARY?  —  But  is  this  special  culture 
of  the  memory  necessary  ?  And,  if  it  is  proved  that  it  is 
necessary,  is  it  possible? 

We  do  not  hesitate  to  reply  in  the  affirmative,  not- 
withstanding the  contrary  opinion  of  Locke. 

Locke's  special  argument  for  calling  in  question  the  util- 
ity of  trailing  the  memory  in  school,  is  the  constant  use 
which  we  make  of  it  in  the  world  and  in  life.  He  says 
that  memory  is  so  necessary  in  all  the  transactions  of 
life,  there  are  so  few  things  in  which  we  can  do  without 
it,  that  there  would  be  no  occasion  for  fearing  that  it 
will  become  enfeebled  and  blunted  for  lack  of  exercise, 
if  exercise  were  really  the  condition  of  its  power. 

Without  doubt  life  will  be  a  good  training  for  the 
memory,  but  on  one  condition,  which  is,  that  the  mem- 
ory has  already  been  made  pliant  and  broken  to  labor 
by  the  studies  of  youth,  and  that  the  man  receive  it 
from  the  hands  of  the  scholar  as  an  instrument  already 
fashioned.  There  is  no  teacher  who  is  not  authorized 
to  contradict  the  opinion  of  Locke,  for  all  know  by  ex- 


120  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

perience  that  the  best  memories  have  need  of  long  ef- 
forts in  order  to  attain  their  maximum  of  power ;  that 
mediocre  memories  would  soon  grow  rusty  if  they  were 
not  constantly  exercised  ;  and  that  finally  the  memories  nat- 
urally poor  would  always  remain  sterile,  if  they  were  not 
early  cultivated. 

117.  Is  SUCH  A  CULTURE  POSSIBLE?  —  But  Locke  goes 
still  further.  His  ultimate  thought  is,  not  that  the  cul- 
ture of  the  memory  is  useless,  but  that  it  is  impossi- 
ble. Exercising  the  memory  on  such  or  such  an  object 
' '  no  more  fits  the  memory  for  the  retention  of  anything 
else,  than  the  graving  of  one  sentence  in  lead  makes 
it  the  more  capable  of  retaining  firmly  any  other  char- 
acters." 1  Here  again  the  English  educator  is  in  contra- 
diction with  facts. 

Whatever  notion  we  form  theoretically  of  the  nature 
of  the  memory ;  whether  we  connect  it  entirely  with  or- 
ganic conditions,  as  Luys  and  Ribot  do,  or  whether  we 
consider  it  an  independent  power  of  the  soul,  with  all 
spiritualist  philosophers,  it  is  practically  certain  that  memory 
makes  progress  through  skilful  attention  and  intelligent 
exercise,  and  that  it  is  not  true  to  say  that  it  depends 
entirely  on  a  "happy  constitution." 

Another  paradox  would  be  to  hold,  with  Jacotot,  by 
a  contrary  exaggeration,  that  education  can  do  everything ; 
that  at  birth  memories  are  equal  in  all  children,  and 
that  inequalities  come  exclusively  from  negligence,  from 
lack  of  care,  from  inattention,  and  from  lack  of  culture. 
Without  speaking  of  extraordinary  and  exceptional  memo- 
ries, which  make  light  of  all  difficulties,  like  that  of  a 
Villemain,  repeating  a  discourse  after  having  heard  it,  of  a 

1  See  Compayre's  History  of  Pedagogy,  pp.  207,  208. 


CULTURE   OF  THE   MEMORY.  121 

Mozart  writing  the  "Miserere"  of  the  Sistine  Chapel 
after  hearing  it  twice,  of  a  Horace  Vernet,  or  of  a  Gus- 
tave  Dore,  painting  portraits  from  memory,  —  without  in- 
voking the  testimony  of  these  prodigious  memories,  which 
attest  by  their  brilliancy  the  potency  of  nature,  there  is 
no  humble  school  where  upon  the  pupils'  benches  the 
teacher  does  not  distinguish  notable  differences  in  natu- 
ral aptitudes  for  learning  and  remembering. 

The  inequality  of  different  minds,  says  Mr.  Bain,  with 
respect  to  the  assimilation  of  knowledge,  in  circumstances 
absolutely  the  same,  is  a  well-known  fact;  and  this  is 
one  of  the  obstacles  presented  by  simultaneous  instruc- 
tion given  to  a  certain  number  of  pupils  arranged  in 
the  same  class. 

118.  EXERCISE    OF  THE  MEMORY. — We    shall    assume, 
then,  as  settled,  that  it  is  necessary  and  possible  to  cultivate 
the  memory.     Now,  there  is  no  other  means  of  cultivating  it 
than  to  exercise  it.     But  to  exercise  it  profitably,  and  to 
reach  conclusions  that  are  really  practical,  it  is  not  sufficient 
to  study  the  memory  in  general  or  as  a  whole,  but  we  must 
make  an  analysis  of  its  elements. 

119.  DIFFERENT  QUALITIES  OF  THE  MEMORY.  —  "A  good 
memory,"  says   Rollin,   "should    have   two   qualities,   two 
virtues,  —  first,  that  of  receiving  promptly  and  without  diffi- 
culty what  is  intrusted  to  it,  and  then  that  of  guarding  it 
faithfully."     To  these  qualities  a  third  should  be  added,  that 
of  easily  restoring  what  has  been  quickly  learned  and  exactly 
retained.     My  memory  is  poor,  if  it  does  not  allow  me  to 
dispose  of  all  I  know  with  facility  and  promptness ;  if,  as 
Montaigne  says,  "It  serves  me  when  it  pleases,  rather  than 
when  7  please." 

These  different  qualities  of  memory  are  not  always  found 


122  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

united.1  It  happens  that  one  who  learns  quickly  also  for- 
gets quickly.  The  memories  that  are  the  quickest  are  often 
the  most  treacherous.  Their  acquisitions  resemble  fortunes 
too  rapidly  made ;  they  lack  solidity.  Often  that  which 
comes  easily  also  goes  easily. 

But  these  qualities,  however,  do  not  exclude  one  another ; 
there  is  usually  a  solidarity  among  them.  The  ideal  is  to 
have  them  all  at  once,  and  the  education  of  the  memory 
ought  to  have  in  view  the  perfecting  of  each  of  them,  by 
particular  attention  and  by  a  special  culture. 

120.  PROMPTNESS  IN  APPREHENDING.  —  It  is  particularly 
in  this  quality  that  the  memory  is  dependent  on  nature,  upon 
innate  tendencies.  Art  is  powerless  to  establish  equality 
between  those  docile,  malleable  intelligences,  of  vivid  im- 
pressions, which  impregnate  themselves,  so  to  speak,  with 
everything  that  they  perceive,  and  those  slow,  indolent, 
unyielding  spirits,  which  learn  only  with  great  difficulty  the 
little  that  they  do  learn.  Let  us  not  conclude  from  this, 
however,  that  we  must  despair  of  correcting,  at  least  in 
part,  these  natural  defects. 

"  We  must  not  be  easily  discouraged,"  Rollin  very  justly  says, 
"nor  yield  to  that  first  resistance  of  the  memory  which  we  have 
often  seen  conquered  and  broken  by  patience  and  perseverance. 
At  first,  only  a  few  lines  should  be  given  such  a  child  to  learn, 
but  he  should  be  required  to  learn  them  with  exactness.  We 
may  try  to  mollify  the  disagreeableness  of  this  work  by  present- 
ing to  him  only  things  which  are  agreeable,  such,  for  example, 
as  the  fables  of  La  Fontaine  and  thrilling  stories.  An  indus- 
trious and  earnest  teacher  may  work  with  his  pupil,  sometimes 
allowing  him  to  beat  and  get  the  start,  and  thus  making  him 
feel  that  by  his  own  power  he  can  do  much  more  than  he 

1  It  appears  to  me  wholly  exaggerated  to  say,  with  M.  Marion, 
"The  three  qualities  of  memory  are  almost  never  united." 


CULTURE   OF  THE   MEMORY.  123 

thought  he  could.1    In  proportion   as  we  see  progress   making 
we  may  gradually  and  insensibly  increase  the  daily  task." 

In  other  terms,  carefully  manage  the  weak  memories  by 
requiring  of  them  only  moderate  and  graduated  exercises ; 
do  not  discourage  them  on  the  start,  but  rather  stimulate 
them  by  skilfully  preparing  little  successes  for  them  and  by 
inspiring  them  with  some  confidence  in  themselves ;  such  is 
the  spirit  of  the  practical  counsels  of  Rollin. 

Let  us  add  that  weakness  of  memory  not  being  an  ultimate 
fact  of  mental  life,  since  it  proceeds  from  and  depends  upon 
the  absence  of  certain  conditions,  such  as  the  lack  of  vivid 
impressions  and  unsteadiness  of  attention,  we  shall  have 
done  much  towards  limbering  up  dull  memories  if  we  have 
known  how  to  awaken  the  sensibility  and  give  stability  to 
the  mind  of  the  child. 

In  particular,  whatever  will  fortify  the  attention  will  aid 
the  memory.  Now,  there  is  no  better  way  to  make  a  pupil 
attentive  than  to  explain  to  him  clearly  and  make  him  per- 
fectly comprehend  whatever  is  taught  him.  The  Conduite 
des  Ecoles  chretiennes  (edition  of  1860)  declares  that 
"pupils  learn  only  with  great  difficulty  what  they  do  not 
comprehend."2  Pascal  said  of  himself  that  he  never  forgot 
what  he  had  once  comprehended.  Whatever  may  be  said  to 
the  contrary,  there  is  no  disaccord  between  the  memory  and 
the  judgment.  In  making  all  his  instruction  exact,  in  multi- 
plying his  explanations,  the  teacher  is  not  working  alone  for 
the  judgment,  but  also  for  the  memory. 

1  "  We  have  often  had  learned  before  us,  —  with  us,  father,  —  in  ten 
minutes,  by  a  whole  class  and  perfectly,  a  half  page  of  text,  a  short 
fable  of  La  Fontaine.    Try  this  plan  of  teaching  to  all  your  pupils 
some  given  lesson,  which  you  explain  and  cause  to  be  comprehended, 
and  you  will  see  produced  astonishing  results  of  infant  memory."  — 
E.  RENDU,  Manuel,  p.  202. 

2  Conduite  a  I'usaye  des  Kcolcs  chrrtiennes,  p.  16. 


124  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

That  which  will  also  contribute  to  promptness  in  learning 
is  order,  the  logical  connection  of  the  facts  which  are  pre- 
sented to  the  child  ;  in  a  word,  it  is  the  association  of  ideas. 

"It  is  indubitable,"  says  the  Port  Royal  logic,  "that  one 
learns  with  a  facility  incomparably  greater,  and  that  he  retains 
much  better,  what  is  taught  in  the  true  order ;  because  the  ideas 
which  have  a  natural  sequence  arrange  themselves  much  better 
in  our  memory  and  revive  one  another  much  more  easily."1 

121.  TENACITY  OF  RECOLLECTIONS. — Recollections  me- 
thodically acquired,  the  possession  of  which  is  pledged  by 
the  attention  that  has  fixed  them  in  the  mind,  and  by 
the  intelligence  that  has  comprehended  their  meaning, 
generally  speaking  defy  forgetfulness.  In  other  terms,  all 
the  efforts  which  are  made  to  facilitate  the  acquisition  of 
recollections  also  assure  their  conservation. 

There  are,  however,  some  particular  rules  to  be  observed 
relative  to  the  second  quality  of  memory.  The  first  of  these 
is  repetition,  which  is  one  of  the  necessary  means  of  training 
the  power  of  recollection. 

It  is  an  old  pedagogical  maxim  that  repetition  is  the  soul 
of  instruction  :  Repetitio  mater  studiorum.  We  must  often 
recur  to  the  same  things,  and  not  fear  the  tedium  of  a  fre- 
quent return  to  the  same  ideas.  "  "We  retain,"  said  Jacotot, 
"only  what  we  repeat."  He  concludes  from  this,  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  adage,  Multum,  non  multa,  that  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  learn  one  thing,  and  to  know  that  well.  The  con- 
tinued repetition  of  one  single  book  would  be  the  ideal  of 
instruction.  .  Strange  exaggeration,  which,  on  the  pretext  of 
strengthening  the  memory,  would  result  in  impoverishing  it ! 
Extent  of  knowledge  is  not  less  desirable  than  solidity. 
But  it  remains  none  the  less  true  that,  freed  from  the  narrow 
bounds  in  which  Jacotot  inclosed  it,  and  employed  under  all 

1  Logic  de  Port-Royal,  4e  partie,  Ch.  X. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  125 

its  forms  (recall,  pure  and  simple,  of  what  has  been  said, 
summaries,  general  review),  repetition  is  one  of  the  essential 
conditions  for  the  development  of  the  memory. 

"  It  is  not  often,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "  that  one  single  occurrence 
leaves  a  permanent  and  recoverable  idea ;  usually,  we  need  several 
repetitions  for  the  purpose.  The  process  of  fixing  the  impression 
occupies  a  certain  length  of  time ;  either  we  must  prolong  the 
first  shock,  or  renew  it  in  several  successive  occasions.  This  is 
the  first  law  of  memory." 1 

Another  important  condition  of  the  fidelity  of  recollection 
is  the  rigorous  and  exact  precision  of  the  ideas  which  are 
intrusted  to  the  mind.  We  must  not  be  satisfied  with  half- 
way work,  and  this  is  why  in  certain  cases  a  literal  repeti- 
tion, and  in  all  cases  a  detailed  and  minute  knowledge  of 
what  has  been  learned,  should  be  required  of  the  child.  In 
the  interesting  chapter  in  which  she  takes  those  to  task  who 
have  proposed  to  replace  the  study  of  words  by  the  study  of 
things,  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure  rightly  observes  that 
these  two  studies  are  inseparably  connected. 

"The  pupil  is  told  to  give  his  effort  only  to  the  sense  of  the 
words  employed  in  his  lessons,  without  giving  his  attention  to  the 
words,  and  that  when  he  recites  his  lesson,  if  it  is  seen  that  he 
comprehends  the  sense  of  it,  we  should  be  satisfied,  whatever 
expressions  he  may  use  to  render  an  account  of  it.  Nevertheless 
these  expressions  are  almost  always  very  vague,  very  inexact, 
for  children  are  not  very  skillful  redacteurs.  This  boasted  com- 
prehension remains  confused  and  soon  disappears,  because  it  has 
not  been  fastened  to  fixed  and  positive  words."  2 

122.  PROMPTNESS  IN  RECALLING. — The  precious  and  rare 
quality  called  presence  of  mind  depends  in  great  part  on 
this  third  form  of  the  memory.  The  best  means  of  de- 

i 


Education  as  a  Science,  p.  20. 
2  L'Education  progressive,  Tom.  II.,  p.  280. 


126  THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

veloping  it  will  be,  in  the  first. place,  frequent  interrogations. 
By  unexpected  questions  the  child  must  be  made  to  exert 
himself,  and,  so  to  speak,  to  jog  his  memory.  He  must  be 
accustomed  to  recover  himself  promptly,  and  from  among  so 
many  others  to  seize  the  recollection  demanded  of  him.  In 
this  way  we  shall  awaken  slumbering  memories  which  have 
treasures,  but  do  not  know  how  to  make  use  of  them. 

Another  important  recommendation  is  to  oppose  routine, 
and  whatever  there  is  of  the  mechanical  in  the  use  of  the 
memory.  The  child  who  is  quick  to  learn  is  too  often  in- 
clined to  repeat  mechanically  what  is  taught  him,  in  the 
order  and  form  in  which  he  has  been  taught.  He  will  re- 
peat without  perturbation  a  chronological  series  of  the  kings 
of  France,  and  will  recite  without  the  change  of  a  word  a 
theorem  of  geometry ;  but  if  he  is  slightly  disturbed  in  this 
purely  mechanical  process,  he  comes  to  a  standstill.  There 
is  no  other  means  of  correcting  this  fault,  or  of  preventing 
.it,  than  frequently  to  take  the  child  at  unawares  by  questions 
in  which  the  natural  order  is  inverted,  and  then  to  compel 
him  to  repeat  under  another  form,  or  with  some  change  of 
expression,  what  he  has  committed  to  memory. 

123.  MEMORY  AND  JUDGMENT. — One  dominant  thought 
ought  to  govern  all  the  efforts  of  the  educator  in  this  careful 
search  for  the  means  of  cultivating  the  memory  ;  and  this  is 
not  to  develop  it  to  the  injury  of  the  judgment.1 

A  prejudice  somewhat  widely  current  is  to  the  effect  that 
' '  the  memory  is  the  almost  irreconcilable  enemy  of  the 
judgment."  (Fontenelle.)  Through  cultivating  their  mem- 
ory certain  people  come  to  leave  their  judgment  fallow. 
We  then  have  to  do  with  insupportable  pedants  who  do  not 

1  The  following  is  the  epitaph  of  the  Pere  Hardouin,  a  Jesuit  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  author  of  learned  works :  "  Hie  jacet  vir 
bonse  memoriae  expectans  judicium." 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  127 

think  for  themselves,  or  who  risk  their  own  thought  only 
under  cover  of  a  quotation ;  who  know  only  what  others 
have  thought  and  said.  Said  Kant,  "What  is  a  man  who 
has  a  great  memory,  but  no  judgment?  He  is  but  a 
living  lexicon." 

Surely  we  must  be  on  our  guard,  even  at  school,  against 
an  excess  of  memory  work.  To  this  faculty  is  applicable  in 
particular  the  rule  proposed  by  Kant :  ' '  Cultivate  separately 
no  faculty  for  itself;  cultivate  each  in  view  of  the  others." 
Unduly  cultivated,  the  memory  annuls,  so  to  speak,  the 
other  faculties,  and,  according  to  the  saying  of  Vauve- 
nargues,  "we  must  have  memory  only  in  proportion  to 
our  intelligence." 

But  there  is  nothing  to  fear  of  the  memory,  provided  we 
hold  it  to  its  place  'and  consider  it  only  as  an  auxiliary  fac- 
ulty, "as  a  marvelous  instrument,"  to  use  Montaigue's 
phrase,  "without  which  the  judgment  can  hardly  perform 
its  office."  When  intrusted  to  a  living,  active  mind,  which 
preserves  the  liberty  of  its  judgments,  things  committed  to 
the  memory,  however  numerous  they  may  be,  animate  and 
vivify  the  intelligence,  far  from  benumbing  and  stifling  it ; 
they  furnish  it  without  encumbering  it.  Moreover,  they  are 
here  the  starting-point  of  a  whole  harvest  of  new  ideas.  As 
Mile.  Marchef-Girard  has  said,  with  some  exaggeration, 
"  the  memory  is  not  a  tomb,  but  a  cradle  in  which  ideas 
grow."1 

124.  MEMORY  AND  VERBAL  REPETITION.  — The  discredit 
into  which  memory  has  sometimes  fallen,  is  chiefly  due  to 
the  confusion  made  between  memory  proper  and  repetition, 
that  is,  a  particular  form  of  the  use  of  the  memory. 
Even  were  we  to  proscribe  verbal  repetition,  and  renounce 

1  Des  Facudte's  humaines,  p.  275. 


128  THEOEETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

learning  by  heart,  it  would  be  none  the  less  necessary   to 
develop  the  memory. 

But  verbal  repetition  itself  is  far  from  deserving  all  the 
criticism  which  it  has  received. 

125.  OPINION    OF   HERBERT    SPENCER.  — Herbert    Spen- 
cer is   one   of   those   who  have   the   most  vigorously  con- 
demned the  method  of  memoriter  recitations. 

"  The  once  universal  practice  of  learning  by  rote  is  daily  falling 
more  into  discredit.  All  modern  authorities  condemn  the  old 
mechanical  way  of  learning  the  alphabet.  The  multiplication- 
table  is  now  frequently  taught  experimentally. 

"In  the  acquirement  of  languages,  the  Grammar-school  plan  is 
being  superseded  by  plans  based  on  the  spontaneous  process  fol- 
lowed by  the  child  in  gaining  its  mother  tong«e The  rote- 
system,  like  other  systems  of  its  age,  made  more  of  the  forms  and 
symbols  than  of  the  thing  symbolized.  To  repeat  the  words 
correctly  was  everything ;  to  understand  their  meaning,  nothing : 
and  thus  the  spirit  was  sacrificed  to  the  letter.  It  is  at  length 
perceived  that,  in  this  case  as  in  others,  such  a  result  is  not  acci- 
dental but  necessary,  —  that  in  proportion  as  there  is  attention 
to  the  signs,  there  must  be  inattention  to  the  thing  signified."  l 

In  this  quotation  we  again  observe  Mr.  Spencer's  habit- 
ual faults,  his  lofty,  absolute  assertions,  devoid  of  measure 
and  so  of  justness.  That  abuse  was  once  made,  and  is 
still  made,  of  memory  lessons,  no  one  denies ;  we  still  re- 
call what  painful  and  dreary  hours  of  study  we  spent  at 
college  in  repeating  in  a  low  voice  long  texts  of  Greek, 
Latin,  and  French.  But  because  too  much  was  formerly 
learned  by  heart,  at  college  and  even  at  school,  is  it  any 
reason  why  nothing  at  all  should  now  be  learned  by  heart? 

126.  ARGUMENTS    PRO    AND   CON. — The    adversaries   of 

1  Education,  pp.  103,  104. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  129 

verbal  repetition  defend  their  position  on  various  grounds. 
American  educators  are  distinguished  for  the  ardor  of 
their  attacks.  Thus  James  Johonuot  asserts  that  the  sys- 
tem of  instruction  which  consists  in  making  pupils  learn  by 
heart  has  no  longer  any  justification  in  modern  societies, 
where  it  is  of  less  consequence  to  maintain  blind  tradi- 
tions and  inconsiderate  respect  for  the  past,  than  to  for- 
tify the  reason  and  to  promote  personal  reflection.1 

Evidently  the  argument  is  valid  only  against  a  system 
of  memorizing  carried  to  an  extreme  in  which  is  required 
a  literal  repetition,  word  for  word,  in  all  branches  of 
instruction,  even  in  those  where  it  is  least  appropriate, 
as  in  the  sciences  and  in  ethics. 

Other  educators  allege  that  the  result  of  memoriter  tasks 
is  not  worth  the  trouble  that  is  taken  to  attain  it.  What 
does  it  profit  a  pupil  to  repeat  ready-made  phrases  and 
to  acquire  a  knowledge  that  is  purely  verbal?  "To  know 
by  heart  is  not  to  know,"  Montaigne  has  said.  More- 
over, literal  repetition  requires  an  intense  effort  and  a 
great  sacrifice  of  time.  The  mind  is  wearied  and  ex- 
hausted in  this  effort ;  and  while  the  pupil  is  tormented 
and  burdened  by  his  lessons,  the  time  passes,  precious 
time,  which  might  be  better  employed. 

We  reply  that,  at  least  in  certain  cases,  the  idea  can- 
not be  separated  from  the  only  words  which  adequately 
express  it,  and  that  it  is  necessary,  consequently,  to  retain 
them  exactly.  We  are  not  really  masters  of  our  own 
thoughts  until  we  have  found  the  words  which  are  fit  to 
express  them.  In  quite  a  large  number  of  cases,  to  know 
by  heart  is  the  only  means  of  knowing. 

From  another  point  of  view,  effort  is  necessary  in  ed- 
ucation. It  is  not  well  to  treat  the  child  too  tenderly, 

1  Principles  and  Practice  of  Tearliituj,  New  York,  1881,  p.  171. 


130  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

and  to  absolve  him  from  all  labor  in  verbal  memorizing, 
on  the  ground  that  he  will  have  understood  and  vaguely 
retained  the  meaning  of  what  is  taught  him.  The  ob- 
jections which  we  have  just  examined  bear  against  the 
abuse  of  verbal  repetition  employed  indiscreetly  and  to 
excess,  rather  than  against  the  discreet  and  moderate  use 
of  literal  repetition,  in  subjects  where  it  is  indispensable. 

127.  WHERE  LITERAL  REPETITION  is  NECESSARY. — An 
English  educator,  Mr.  Fitch,  has  concisely  stated  the  rule 
that  determines  the  cases  in  which  literal  repetition  is 
necessary  : 

"  When  the  object  is  to  have  thoughts,  facts,  reasonings  repro- 
duced, seek  to"  have  them  reproduced  in  the  pupil's  own  words. 
Do  not  set  the  faculty  of  mere  verbal  memory  to  work.  But 
when  the  words  themselves  in  which  a  fact  is  embodied  have 
some  special  fitness  or  beauty  of  their  own,  when  they  repre- 
sent some  scientific  datum  or  central  truth,  which  could  not 
otherwise  be  so  well  expressed,  then  see  that  the  form  as 
well  as  the  substance  of  the  expression  is  learned  by  heart." 1 

According  to  this,  it  is  easy  to  fix  the  limit  which 
verbal  repetition  should  not  pass.  In  grammar,  the  prin- 
cipal rules ;  in  arithmetic,  the  definitions ;  in  geometry, 
the  theorems ;  in  the  sciences  in  general,  the  formulae ; 
in  history,  a  few  summaries ;  in  geography,  the  expla- 
nation of  certain  technical  terms ;  in  ethics,  a  few  max- 
ims ;  these  are  things  which  the  child  ought  to  know 
word  for  word,  verbatim,  on  the  condition,  of  course, 
that  he  perfectly  understands  the  meaning  of  what  he 
recites,  and  that  his  attention  is  called  to  the  thought 
not  less  than  to  the  form  of  expression.  Nothing  should 
be  intrusted  to  memory  except  that  which  the  intelli- 

1  Fitch,  op.  cit,  p.   135. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  131 

gence  has  perfectly  comprehended.  Everything  else  must 
be  referred  to  the  liberal  memory  of  thoughts,  not  to  the 
strict  memory  of  words ;  and  it  is  as  mischievous  as  it 
is  useless,  and  as  dangerous -as  it  is  difficult,  to  require 
long  pages  of  history,  of  grammar,  and  of  physics,  to 
be  learned  by  heart. 

128.  EXERCISES  IN  MEMORIZING.  — There  is,  however, 
another  important  use  of  verbal  repetition,  —  the  literal 
study  of  choice  extracts,  selections  in  prose  and  verse 
suitable  for  enriching  and  adorning  the  memory  of  children. 
"Exercises  in  exact  memorizing  are  not  sufficiently  em- 
ployed in  our  schools."1  There  is  no  better  means  of 
forming  the  taste  of  pupils,  of  teaching  them  to  feel  and 
enjoy  eloquence  and  poetry,  the  power  of  beautiful  thoughts 
and  the  charm  of  fine  language.  Even  a  careful  reading 
does  not  always  suffice ;  it  must  be  accompanied  from 
time  to  time  by  verbal  recitation.  By  this  means  you 
constrain  the  memory  to  an  effort  of  marked  intensity, 
to  a  real  concentration  of  the  attention.  You  also  oblige 
the  child  to  speak.  Finally,  by  this  means  the  child 
penetrates  more  deeply  into  the  processes  and  the  art 
of  the  great  writers ;  he  appropriates  their  style  and  forms 
within  himself  a  treasury  of  beautiful  models  which  the 
mind  of  the  pupil  unconsciously  recalls  when  he  himself 
comes  to  write. 

The  recitation  of  authors  is  not  only  an  exercise  in 
memory,  but  also  in  language  and  pronunciation ;  and 
finally,  it  is  an  excellent  preparation  for  writing,  for  origi- 
nal composition.  But  we  do  not  forget  the  difficulty  there 
is  in  choosing  selections  for  recitations.  In  fact,  in  the 
pages  which  are  to  be  learned  by  heart  there  must  be 


E.  Rendu,  Manuel  de  I'enseignement  primaire,  p.  201. 


132  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

found  united  the  talent  of  the  writer  and  the  simplicity  of 
a  thought  which  is  just,  pure,  in  a  sense  popular,  and 
within  the  range  of  the  young  hearers  whom  we  are 
instructing. 

129.  ABUSE  OF   VERBAL    MEMORIZING.  —  We  should   be 
careful,  however,    not  to   go  to   extremes.     On   this   point 
we  recall  the  saying  of  Dr.  Johnson.     One  day,  as  he  was 
visiting  a  school  where  the  custom  of  learning  fables  was 
in  fashion,  a  lad  stepped   forward   to   declaim  a  selection 
for  the  Doctor,  while  at  his  side   his  younger  brother  was 
preparing  to  recite  another  selection  for  him.     "  My  little 
fellows,"  said  Johnson,  interrupting  the  one  who  was  speak- 
ing,  "could  you   not  recite   for  me  your  verses   both   at 
once  ?  "     But  it  is  not  merely  because  they  are  insupportable 
to  others  that  we  condemn  those  who  are  too  much  given 
to  recitation,  but  because  they  render  no  sort  of  service  to 
themselves  and  waste  their  own   time.     We   have  not  the 
least  admiration  for  those  wonderful  feats  of  memory  which 
consist,   for   example,    as    Rabelais    has   said,    in   making 
sport  of  them,  in  reciting  a  book  from  beginning  to  end, 
backwards  and  forwards. 

"  I  would  prefer,"  said  Madame  de  Maintenon,  in  speaking 
of  her  pupils  of  Saint  Cyr,  "  that  they  retain  only  ten  lines 
which  they  perfectly  understand,  rather  than  learn  a  whole 
volume  without  knowing  what  they  are  repeating." 

130.  CHOICE    OF    EXERCISES. — Little   and   well,  —  such, 
then,   will  be   the   rule   in  the  matter  of  memorizing.     In 
making    selections,    preference   will   be    given  to   extracts 
which  are  interesting   and  varied,  now  in  verse   and  now 
in  prose,  and  especially  in  verse  for  little  children.     Care 
will   be   taken   to    read   them  •  aloud   to   the   class    before 
causing  them  to  be  learned,  so  that  the  exercise  in  reci- 


CULTURE   OF   THE  MEMORY.  133 

tation  shall  at  first  be  a  reading  lesson.  Then  these  ex- 
ercises will  be  carefully  explained.  We  are  not  of  those 
who  think  that  the  memory  should  ever  anticipate  the 
intelligence,1  and  that  it  is  well  to  begin  with  a  sort 
of  mechanical  culture  of  the  memory  by  requiring  things 
to  be  learned  which  are  not  understood.  The  child,  doubt- 
less, with  his  marvelous  facility  at  memorizing,  will  sub- 
mit to  this  mechanical  labor ;  but  in  doing  so  he  will 
contract  a  dangerous  habit  from  which  he  will  suffer  all 
his  life,  —  that  of  repeating  like  a  parrot  phrases  of 
which  he  can  give  no  account. 

131.  SUMMARY  OF  THE  CONDITIONS  FOB  THE  DEVELOP- 
MENT OF  THE  MEMORY.  —  An  English  educator,  Mr.  Blackie, 
has  happily  summed  up  the  principal  conditions  to  be  ful- 
filled for  assuring  strength  of  memory,  or  for  re-enforcing 
its  weakness.2  These  conditions  are  the  following : 

1.  The    clearness,    vivacity,    and    intensity    of    the    original 
impression. 

2.  The  order   and   classification   of  the  facts. 

3.  Repetition.     "  If  the   nail   does  not  go   in   at  one  stroke, 
let  it  have   another  and  another." 

4.  The  power  of   logical   sequence.     "  The  man  who  is  slow 
to    remember    without     a     reason,    searches    after    the    causal 
connection  of  the  facts,  and,  when   he   has  found  it,  binds  to- 
gether by  the   bonds   of   rational   sequences  what  the  constitu- 
tion of    his    mind   disinclined  him   to   receive   as   an   arbitrary 
and  unexplained  succession." 

5.  The   artificial    relations    established    between    the    things 
remembered. 

6.  The  use   of  written    notes.     "The  lack  of  a  memory  nat- 
urally good,"   said    Montaigne,   "caused    me    to   make  one    of 
paper." 

1  See  Appendix  A. 

8  Blackie,  op.  cit.,  p.   19  et  seq. 


134  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

To  these  conditions,  which  are  all  of  the  psychologi- 
cal order,  there  must  be  added,  for  the  sake  of  com- 
pleteness, the  physical  conditions. 

"  The  first  general  circumstance  favoring  retentiveness,"  says 

Mr.  Bain,  "is  the  physical  condition  of  the   individual 

It  includes  general  health,  vigor,  and  freshness  at  the  moment, 
together  with  the  further  indispensable  proviso  that  the  nutri- 
tion, instead  of  being  drafted  off  to  strengthen  the  mere 
physical  functions,  is  allowed  to  run  in  good  measure  to  the 
brain."  J 

Everybody  knows  by  experience  that  the  power  of  the 
memory  is  greater  after  a  meal  than  before  it,  after 
sleep  than  before  it. 

132.  MNEMONIC  DEVICES.  —  Educational  writers  have  often 
recommended  the  use  of  artificial  methods,  which,  by 
establishing  an  artificial  bond  between  recollections,  insure 
their  durability  and  facilitate  their  recall. 

But,  in  the  first  place,  mnemonic  devices  have  the  dis- 
advantage of  accustoming  the  mind  to  arbitrary  and  su- 
perficial associations  of  ideas.  Had  they,  with  respect 
to  the  development  of  the  memory,  all  the  efficacy  which 
is  ascribed  to  them,  it  would  still  be  necessary  to  con- 
demn them,  by  reason  of  the  mischievous  influence  which 
they  might  exert  upon  the  judgment  and  the  reason. 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  22.  However  much  disposed  we 
may  be  to  take  into  account  the  physical  conditions,  we  believe 
that  in  pedagogy  we  must  be  cautious  of  considerations  of  this 
nature.  We  do  not  see  what  education  can  gain  from  observa- 
tions like  these:  "The  words  which  we  make  use  of  in  our 
thoughts  do  not  appear  in  consciousness,  except  through  the  ac- 
tivity of  the  special  cells  which  are  situated,  in  general,  in  the 
third  frontal  convolution  of  the  left  hemisphere."  (From  an  article 
on  the  Recitation  classique,  by  M.  Douliot,  in  the  Revue  de  I'enseigne- 
ment  secondaire,  mai,  1885.) 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  135 

But  still  further,  what  must  we  think  of  these  devices 
as  they  affect  the  memory  itself? 

"Artificial  bonds  of  association,"  says  Mr.  Blackie,  "may 
also  sometimes  be  found  useful,  as  when  a  school-boy  remem- 
bers that  Abydos  is  on  the  Asiatic  coast  of  the  Hellespont, 
because  both  Asia  and  Abydos  commence  with  the  letter  A  ; 
but  such  tricks  suit  rather  the  necessities  of  an  ill-trained 
governess  than  the  uses  of  a  manly  mind.  I  have  no  faith 
in  the  systematic  use  of  what  are  called  artificial  mnemonic 
systems;  they  fill  the  fancy  with  a  set  of  arbitrary  and 
ridiculous  symbols,  which  interfere  with  the  natural  play  of 
the  faculties.  Dates  in  history,  to  which  this  sort  of  machin- 
ery has  been  generally  applied,  are  better  recollected  by  the  casual 
dependence,  and  even  the  accidental  contiguity,  of  great  names."  1 

The  true  mnemonics  is  that  which  is  founded  on  the 
real  relations,  the  natural  association  of  ideas,  and  upon 
the  method  and  logical  order  which  should  be  introduced 
into  instruction.  On  the  contrary,  the  mnemonics  which 
is  based  on  artificial  resemblances  and  conventional  re- 
lations may  be  useful  for  preserving  a  particular  remem- 
brance ;  but  it  is  injurious  to  the  general  culture  of  the 
memory.  Everything  that  aids  the  memory  does  not,  in 
fact,  strengthen  it ;  and  it  contracts  bad  habits  by  being 
furnished  with  exterior  supports  and  artificial  aids,  which 
disqualify  it  for  relying  upon  itself  and  upon  the  nature 
of  things. 

133.  THE  ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS.  —  The  association  of 
ideas  is  one  of  the  essential  laws  of  the  development  of  the 
memory,  in  the  sense  that  our  recollections  are  connected 
with  one  another,  that  their  connection  fixes  them  in  the 
mind,  and  that,  once  associated  by  any  bond  whatever,  the 
appearance  of  one  suffices  to  evoke  the  other.  This  is  why 

1  Blackie,  op.  tit.,  pp.  20,  21. 


136  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

new  studies,  which  by  the  attraction  of  their  very  novelty 
excite  the  attention,  fatigue  and  disconcert  the  memory, 
because  the  ideas  which  they  suggest  to  the  mind  do  not  find 
these  points  of  support,  that  is,  other  analogous  ideas  to 
which  they  can  be  attached. 

In  the  culture  of  the  memory  the  teacher  will  then  take 
advantage  of  the  association  of  ideas  and  of  its  different 
principles,  —  some  of  them  accidental  and  exterior,  like  con- 
tiguity in  time  and  space  ;  others  intriusical  and  logical,  like 
the  relation  of  cause  to  effect.  The  more  relations  that  are 
established  among  the  items  of  knowledge,  the  greater  will 
be  the  association  of  ideas,  and  the  more  active  and  tena- 
cious the  memory.  Saint  Fra^ois  de  Sales  said,  in  a 
pointed  way :  "A  good  way  to  learn  is  to  study ;  a  better 
is  to  listen  ;  the  very  best  is  to  teach  ! " 

If  the  best  way  to  learn  is  really  to  teach,  it  is  precisely 
because  the  teacher  is  obliged  to  classify  and  co-ordinate  the 
knowledges  which  he  teaches,  and  to  subject  them  to  a  rig- 
orous and  methodical  order. 

134.  DIFFERENT  FORMS  OF  THE  MEMORY.  —  "We  speak 
of  the  memory,"  says  M.  Legouve  ;  "we  should  say  memo- 
ries." In  truth,  there  is  a  memory  of  facts,  a  memory  of 
words,  a  memory  of  ideas,  a  memory  of  dates,  of  places, 
and  still  others ;  and  these  different  memories,  while  not 
excluding  one  another,  are  rarely  found  united  in  the  same 
person.  One  who  retains  imperturbably  a  series  of  figures 
and  computations  will  be  incapable  of  recalling  the  forms  of 
objects  and  the  appearance  of  persons.  It  is  habit,  it  is 
frequent  and  repeated  exercise,  which  contributes  more  than 
nature  to  the  development  of  these  different  dispositions. 
Each  profession,  each  trade,  tends  to  favor  the  one  or  the 
other.  At  school,  the  duty  of  the  teacher  should  be  to 
oppose  these  specializations  of  the  memory  and  not  permit 


CULTURE   OF   THE   MEMORY.  137 

it  to  be  devoted  exclusively  to  the  acquisition  of  a  single 
kind  of  knowledge. 

In  a  word,  the  memory  ought  to  be  developed  in  all  direc- 
tions, in  behalf  of  abstract  ideas  as  in  behalf  of  sensible 
images  and  notions.  It  should  be  a  flexible  and  general 
power  of  acquisition,  which  lends  itself  to  all  the  labors  of 
thought  and  to  all  the  occupations  of  life.  If  it  is  but  the 
guardian  of  a  privileged  class  of  recollections,  it  will  still 
render  important  services,  but  services  which  are  restricted 
and  particular;  it  will  no  longer  be  the  universal  faculty 
which  it  should  be,  the  servant  of  the  intelligence,  a  servant, 
moreover,  with  which  we  cannot  dispense. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

CULTUKE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION. 

135.  OFFICE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.  —  The  imagination  is 
not  one  of  those  essential  faculties  which,  like  the  memory, 
take  part  in  all  the  mental  operations,  or,  like  the  judgment, 
are  constantly  making  manifest  the  activity  of  the  spirit. 
It  is  impossible   to   imagine  an   intelligence  which   cannot 
recollect,  which  cannot  judge ;  but  it  is  possible  for  us  to 
conceive  of  a  man  without  imagination. 

The  judgment  is  the  normal  act  of  the  intellectual  life ; 
the  memory  is  one  of  its  necessary  conditions.  The  imagi- 
nation is  but  an  auxiliary,  accessory  faculty  ;  it  merely  inter- 
venes on  occasion  to  aid,  and  sometimes  to  impede  in  their 
development,  the  other  powers  of  the  soul. 

136.  BENEFITS  OF  THE  IMAGINATION. — We  by  no  means 
deny  the  great  and  real  services  which  the  imagination  is 
called  to  render,  either  in  practical  life,  in  literature  and  the 
arts,  or  even   in  science.     We  do   not   forget   that  it  em- 
bellishes existence  by  the  golden  dreams  with  which  it  lulls 
us,  that  it  nourishes  our  hopes,  and  that  it  fills  by  its  sweet 
contemplations  the  chasms  and  intervals  of  active,  reflective 
life.     Nor  do  we  forget  that  it  is  the  inspirer  of  poetry  and 
the  handmaid  of  art,  and  that  without  it  literature  would  be 
but  a  cold  and  insipid  photograph  of  reality.     The  scientist 
himself  has   need  of   imagination,   for  it  suggests  to  him 
fruitful  hypotheses  and  bold  inventions,  which  often  put  him 

138 


CULTURE   OF  THE   IMAGINATION.  139 

on  the  route  toward  the  truth ;  and  a  philosopher  has  said 
that  a  chapter  on  logic  might  be  written  with  this  title  : 
Errors  committed  through  default  of  imagination.1 

137.  DANGERS  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.  —  But  if  it  is  easy  to 
extol  the  imagination  and  its  benefits,  it  is  none  the  less  so 
to  decry  it  and  point  out  its  dangers.     Of  how  many  errors 
and  illusions  is  it  not  the. source  !     Pascal  harshly  character- 
ized it  as   "the  enemy  of  reason,"  "the  mistress  of  error 
and  falsehood."     Malebranche  called  it  "  the  madcap  of  the 
house,"  to  express  the  error  and  the  disorder  which  it  can 
excite  in  the  soul. 

The  education  of  the  imagination  will  not,  then,  be  merely 
a  work  of  excitation  and  development. 

Like  the  sensibility,  like  all  the  disturbed  and  disturbing 
faculties,  susceptible  of  good  and  of  evil,  the  imagination 
must  be  supervised,  restrained,  and  directed. 

"Other  faculties,"  says  Madame  de  Saussure,  "furnish  no 
occasion  for  constraint.  Every  innocent  exercise  which  tends 
to  strengthen  the  attention,  the  reason,  and  the  memory 
forms  a  part  of  our  plan,  and  we  can  employ  it  without  hesi- 
tation in  the  work  of  development;  but  the  moment  the  im- 
agination becomes  the  subject  of  our  attention,  all  becomes 
more  delicate  and  dangerous.  To  restrain,  to  regulate,  to 
moderate,  is  often  more  necessary  than  to  develop;  and  yet 
who  would  extinguish  the  imagination?" 

138.  ITS  POWER  IN  CHILDHOOD. — All  the  philosophers 
save  Rousseau,  who,  continuing  to  isolate  himself  in  his  par- 
adoxes, denies  imagination  to  the  child,  after  having  denied 
him  memory, — all  the  observers  of  childhood  are  in  accord 
in  recognizing  in  this  period  of  life  the  precocious  develop- 
ment of  the  imagination.     Madame  de  Saussure,  who  has 

1  Paul  Janet,  Philosophic  du  bonheur,  p.  01. 


140  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

written  upon  this  subject  one  of  the  finest  chapters  of  her 
excellent  book,  declares  that  at  the  beginning  of  life  the 
imagination  is  "all-powerful."1 

It  is  Kant's  opinion  that  the  infant  imagination  is  ex- 
tremely vivid,  and  that  it  needs  to  »be  governed,  not  to  be 
enlarged. 

139.  ITS  DIFFERENT  FORMS. — But  before  going  further, 
in  order  to  introduce   greater  clearness  into  a  question   of 
such  delicacy,  it  is  important  at  this  point  to  distinguish  the 
two   principal   forms   of    the   imagination,  —  one   which   is 
ordinarily  called   the  representative   imagination,  which   is 
hardly  more  than  vivid  memory,  the  faculty  of  recalling  with 
the  eyes  closed  what  we  have  seen  with  the  eyes  open ;  the 
other,  which  is  in  truth  the  imagination  proper,  that  which 
invents  and  combines  under  new  forms  the  images  borrowed 
from  the  memory.     The  representative  imagination,  more- 
over, is  the  starting-point  of  the  other,  the  humble  cradle  of 
a  faculty  summoned  to  the  most  brilliant  destinies. 

"The  imagination,"  says  Madame  Pape-Carpantier,  "that 
precious  endowment,  has  been  given  to  the  child  in  order  to 
permit  him,  when  he  has  imitated  what  he  has  seen,  to 
construct  for  himself,  in  his  turn,  things  that  are  new.  Thus 
this  faculty  is  endowed  with  an  incessant  activity,  which 
is  ever  urging  the  child  to  action.  It  is  only  rarely,  then, 
that  we  have  to  stimulate  the  imagination ;  but  we  have  to 
offer  it  wholesome  aliment  and  open  to  it  straight  and  be- 
coming paths."  2 

140.  THE  REPRESENTATIVE  IMAGINATION. — We  might  be 
tempted    to    think    that    the    representative    imagination, 
manifestly  useful  to  the  artist  and  the  painter,  who  need 

1  Education  progressive,  Tom.  II.,  p.  297,  Ch.  VIII. 

2  Madame  Pape-Carpantier,  Cours  complet  d'tfducation,  1874. 


CULTURE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.         141 

to  form  vivid  representations  of  objects,  renders  no  ser- 
vice to  the  child  and  plays  no  part  in  the  earliest  educa- 
tion ;  but  a  little  reflection  suffices  to  prove  the  contrary. 

A  vivid  representation  of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet 
will  be  of  great  service  in  teaching  to  read  and  write 
quickly  and  well.  Further  on,  in  the  tracing  of  maps, 
in  the  study  of  geometry,  and  still  more  in  the  exer- 
cises in  drawing,  children  well  endowed  with  respect  to 
the  imagination,  and  accustomed  to  conceive  with  clear- 
ness the  material  forms  of  objects,  will  have  no  difficulty 
in  surpassing  their  comrades. 

Even  in  the  study  of  orthography,  the  representative 
imagination  has  its  importance.  How  shall  we  explain 
the  fact  that  one  child,  as  intelligent  as  another,  who 
has  even  read  much  more,  is  nevertheless  much  slower 
in  learning  to  spell?  The  cause  of  this  is  probably  in 
the  weakness  of  the  representative  imagination.  Certain 
children,  who  read  readily,  in  some  way  do  not  follow 
the  text  except  by  the  thought;  their  eyes  are  not  suf- 
ficiently fixed  upon  the  words  themselves  and  upon  the 
elements  which  compose  them.  So  that,  when  asked  to 
write  from  memory  a  word  which  they  have  read  for  the 
tenth  time,  they  bungle  and  disfigure  it,  they  do  not  re- 
produce all  its  letters ;  like  unskillful  draftsmen,  who 
through  defective  imagination  cannot  represent  with  exact- 
ness the  object  which  they  have  seen  and  which  they 
wish  to  draw  from  memory. 

141.  CULTURE  OF  THE  REPRESENTATIVE  IMAGINATION.— 
Though  the  representative  imagination,  like  the  memory, 
is  instinctively  very  powerful,  it  may  nevertheless  be 
the  object  of  a  special  culture.  Exercises  in  intuition, 
like  those  employed  by  Pestalozzi,  are  especially  adapted 
to  this  education.  Mr.  Bain  states  that  almost  the  only 


142  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

means  of  strengthening  this  faculty  is  by  making  addi- 
tions to  our  knowledge ;  but  on  this  condition,  however, 
that  we  have  due  regard  to  the  precision  of  the  knowl- 
edge communicated,  and  to  the  clearness  and  vividness 
of  the  perceptions  we  acquire.  A  multitude  of  ideas, 
confusedly  and  vaguely  conceived,  would  tend  only  to 
befog  and  obscure  the  imagination.  In  order  to  imagine 
well,  we  must  begin  by  seeing  well. 

Accustomed  to  conceive  clearly  and  distinctly  whatever 
the  senses  perceive,  the  imagination  will  become  a  good 
instrument  of  intuition,  invaluable  not  only  for  recalling 
objects  that  we  have  seen,  but  also  for  representing 
objects  that  we  have  not  seen.  In  fact,  the  imaginative 
faculty,  in  its  higher  manifestations,  is  something  more 
than  the  mere  photographic  reproduction  of  what  has 
been  really  perceived ;  it  allows  us  to  conceive  with 
clearness  any  object  whatever  from  a  simple  verbal  de- 
scription of  it.  It  is  a  great  help  in  the  study  of 
history  and  geography,  because  it  places  the  child  in  a 
position  to  see,  with  the  eyes  of  the  mind,  the  places, 
the  events,  and  the  men  that  are  the  subjects  of  the 
lesson.  It  animates  instruction,  gives  vividness  to  ideas 
and  coloring  to  events,  and  so  inspires  an  interest  in 
the  subject  in  hand. 

Care  must  be  taken,  however,  that  the  child  does  not 
make  a  misuse  of  the  conceptive  faculty.  Very  much 
disposed  to  think  by  images,  he  has  not  at  his  dispo- 
sition, in  the  early  years  of  his  life,  that  algebra  of 
thought  called  language.  Back  of  each  word  that  he 
pronounces,  he  sees  with  its  details  of  form  and  color, 
the  object  designated  by  that  word.  If  pushed  too  far, 
this  is  a  dangerous  habit,  because  it  obstructs  the  clearness 
and  the  celerity  of  thought,  and  causes  the  pupil  to 
loiter  amid  useless  imaginings.  The  image  should  not 


CULTURE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.         143 

stifle  the  idea  and  obstruct  the  work  of  abstract  thought, 
by  mingling  with  them  a  train  of  sensible  representations. 

Let  us  add  that  the  representative  imagination  should 
not  be  considered  merely  an  instrument  which  is  to  be 
made  deft  and  strong.  It  is  a  direct  source  of  acqui- 
sitions ;  it  peoples  our  consciousness  and  heart  with  a 
world  of  images  and  recollections. 

Hence  the  need  of  careful  oversight  and  of  choice 
in  the  first  impressions  of  the.  imagination.  The  child 
must  be  shielded  from  whatever  is  ugly,  repulsive,  and 
immoral.  Madame  de  Sevigne  was  fond  of  repeating 
the  saying,  "To  the  pure  all  things  are  pure."  In 
other  terms,  in  a  soul  healthy  and  pure  unwholesome 
impressions  leave  no  trace  of  evil.  Perhaps  this  is  true 
of  consciences  already  formed  and  of  characters  already 
established,  whose  inclinations  are  strong  enough,  whose 
habits  are  sufficiently  fixed  to  reject  every  impure  alloy, 
and  which  can  encounter  the  most  pernicious  impressions 
with  impunity ;  but  this  saying  is  not  applicable  to  the 
child  whose  mind,  in  the  process  of  formation,  is  im- 
pregnated with  everything  that  touches  it  and  opposes 
resistance  to  no  impression.1 

That  which  is  best  adapted  to  the  early  culture  of 
the  imagination  is  the  spectacle  presented  by  nature. 
Before  he  is  capable  of  becoming  interested  in  the  works 
of  man,  the  child  is  already  disposed  to  admire  "  the 
grand  poem  which  the  finger  of  God  has  written  on  the 
surface  of  the  earth." 

"  Often  take  children,"  says  Gauthey,  "  to  the  bosom  of  nature, 
that  they  may  there  revel  at  will  in  colors,  forms,  and  perfumes."  2 

1  "  New  vases  preserve  the  taste  of  the  first  liquor  that  is  put 
into  them ;  and  wool,  once  colored,  never  regains  its  primitive 
whiteness."  —  QITINTILIAN. 

2  Gauthey,  De  I' 'Education,  Paris,  1854,  Tom.  I.,  p.  464. 


144  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

142.  PICTURES  PROPERLY    so   CALLED. — It  is  no  longer 
necessary   to   call    the    attention    to    the    importance    of 
pictures   and   to   the   part   which   they    may    play    in   in- 
struction.    On   every    hand   the    art   of   picture-making   is 
being  developed,    and   the   representations   of   real   objects 
are  scattered  everywhere,  —  upon  the  walls  of  our  school- 
rooms,  in   works   of   standard  literature,  upon  the   covers 
of  pupils'   note-books. 

"  Could  we  show  objects  to  children  and  have  them  touched 
and  handled,  it  would  doubtless  be  best;  but  if  objects  are 
out  of  reach,  or  are  of  such  a  nature  as  to  make  direct  pres- 
entation impossible,  the  teacher  who  can  draw  calls  to  his 
aid  books  of  engravings,  maps,  or  pictures.1 

The  picture,  then,  has  gained  for  itself  a  place ;  and 
since  the  day  of  Comenius,  who  in  his  Orbis  Pictus  was 
the  first  to  employ  it  as  a  means  of  instruction,  it  has 
become  popularized  and  at  the  same  time  perfected. 
Children  love  them ;  there  is  no  doubt  on  that  point. 
Some  teachers  assert  that  girls  are  even  more  fond  of 
them  than  boys  are.  At  any  rate,  pictures  are  the 
first  poesy  of  childhood,  and  are  to  be  commended  in 
the  first  place  because  they  furnish  amusement  and  rec- 
reation. But  they  are  also  a  means  of  developing  the 
representative  imagination,  of  fixing  the  attention,  and 
of  making  study  attractive.  Finally,  they  are  a  school 
of  positive  instruction,  and  at  the  same  time  a  prepa- 
ration for  an  education  in  art. 

143.  THE  CREATIVE  IMAGINATION.  —  The  expression  crea- 
tive imagination  has  the  sanction  of  usage,  but  it  is  certainly 
inexact.     The  imagination  acts,  invents,  arranges  according 

1  Du  Mesnil,  Lettre  a  M.  Jules  Ferry,  1880,  p.  21. 


CULTURE  OF  THE   IMAGINATION.  145 

to  its  fancy,  magnifies,  contracts,  modifies  in  a  thousand 
ways  the  elements  it  borrows  from  reality,  and  groups  the 
images  furnished  by  the  observation  and  the  memory  in 
accordance  with  an  ideal  which  it  conceives ;  but  in  no  true 
sense  does  it  create. 

144.  DOES  IT  EXIST  IN  THE  CHILD?  —  Whatever  name  we 
give  it,1  —  and  we  prefer  to  call  it  the  active  or  inventive 
imagination,  —  it    is    developed    at   a  quite    early   period. 
There  comes  a  moment  in  the  life  of  the  child  when  the 
spu-it  is  no  longer  merely  a  faithful  memory  and  a  passive 
reproduction  of  what  the  senses  have  perceived ;  when  from 
the  shock  of  multiplied  representations  and  from  the  clash 
of  various  images,  there  burst  forth,  under  the  stimulus  of 
the  sentiments,  a  certain  number  of  new  and  original  con- 
ceptions which  attest  the  native  fecundity  of  the  spirit.     Of 
course  all  infant  intelligences  are  not  alike  in  this  respect. 
Perhaps  to  a  greater  degree  than  any  other,  the  inventive 
faculty  supposes  a  strength  of  intelligence  and  a  power  of 
sensibility  which   are  very  unevenly  distributed  by  nature ; 
but  it  may  be  affirmed  that,  with  equal  intelligence,  the  child 
will  have  the  most  imagination  who  has  read  most,  traveled 
most,  observed  most  things,  witnessed  most  spectacles,  — 
who,  in  a  word,  has  at  his  disposal  most  material  which  can 
be  utilized  in  new  combinations  and  constructions. 

Nothing  is  more  varied,  however,  than  the  play  of  the 
childish  imagination  in  the  thousand  pastures  where  it  strays 
in  pursuit  of  artless  fictions  and  innocent  falsehoods. 

145.  MYTHOLOGICAL  TENDENCY. — At  first,  the  child  has 
a  marked  tendency  to  personify  all  the  objects  which  sur- 

1  English  psychologists  call  it  the  constructive  imagination,  in  dis- 
tinction from  the  imagination  that  is  simply  reproductive. 


146  THEOEETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

round  him,  to  represent  them  to  himself  after  his  own  image, 
to  enter  into  conversation  with  animals,  and  even  with  inan- 
imate things.  His  mental  state  is  very  like  that  of  primitive 
people,  who  attribute  life  and  feeling  to  material  objects, 
and  invest  all  things  with  human  or  divine  qualities.  "  The 
sun  has  risen,"  a  child  was  told.  "  "Who  then  is  its  maid?" 
he  asked.  The  Greeks  believed  that  Apollo  drove  the 
chariot  of  the  sun  through  the  heavens.  The  little  child 
imagines  that  the  sun  should  be  taken  out  for  a  walk  by  an 
attendant,  just  as  he  is  himself. 

There  is  no  great  good  to  be  expected  from  a  tendency 
which  renews  for  each  child  the  ridiculous  crudities  and 
dangerous  superstitions  of  the  infancy  of  the  race.  How- 
ever, we  may  take  advantage  of  this  tendency  in  creating  an 
interest  in  the  reading  of  fables.1  The  child,  in  order  to 
enjoy  La  Fontaine,  needs  really  to  believe  that  the  animals 
and  plants  speak,  and  that  they  are  really  the  authors  of 
the  acts  which  the  poet  attributes  to  them.2 

Notwithstanding  Rousseau,  who  would  have  us  show 
children  only  what  is  true,  let  us  allow  the  little  learner  to 
wander  off  into  fairy-land.  The  full  day  of  reason  will 
come  soon  enough  to  dissipate  the  shadows  and  phantoms 
of  the  imagination. 

146.  POETICAL  TENDENCY. — The  difference  between  the 
mythologist  and  the  poet  is  that  the  former  has  an  artless 
belief  in  the  fictions  of  his  imagination,  while  the  later  en- 
joys them  without  believing  in  them.  The  poet  yields  to  a 

1  See  the  judicious  article  of  M.   Antoine  (Fables)  in  the  Diction- 
naire  de  Pedagogic. 

2  Gauthey    gives  an  account    of    a    little    girl    who,    visiting    a 
museum  of  natural  history,  asked  to  see  some  crickets,  and  two 
were  shown  her.    "  Which  of    these  two    crickets,"  she    said,  "  is 
the  one  that  had  that  talk  with  the  ant  ? " 


CULTURE  OF  THE   IMAGINATION.  147 

semi-illusion  like  that  which  we  experience  at  the  theatre. 
Without  being  wholly  the  dupes  of  the  events  which  take 
place  in  the  drama  played  before  our  eyes,  we  are  partially 
deceived.  We  become  interested  in  the  characters  of  the 
play  just  as  though  they  were  real,  and  yet  we  know  that 
they  are  not. 

"  Children  are  born  poets,"  says  an  observer  of  infancy ; 
"  and  this  is  why  we  must  entertain  them  with  poetical  ideas." 

The  childish  imagination  easily  invents  for  itself  fictions 
which  charm  it,  and  dramas  where  it  assigns  parts  to  im- 
aginary characters.  The  son  of  Tiedemann  imagined  con- 
versations between  cabbage-stalks.  "Children,"  says  M. 
Egger,  "contrive  for  themselves  the  instruments  needed  in 
their  little  dramas." 

"We  give  them  playthings  for  the  purpose,  but  there  are 
not  enough  of  these  for  all  the  scenes  which  they  imagine, 
and  the  same  toy  will  often  answer  for  several  parts,  and 
sometimes  for  very  different  ones." 1 

Madame  Necker  de  Saussure  mentions  a  great  number  of 
instances  which  exhibit  this  poetical  tendency  of  the  child 
to  represent  to  himself  something  besides  what  he  has  seen  ; 
and  she  concludes  thus : 

"  The  entire  existence  of  little  children  is  dramatic.  Their 
life  is  a  pleasing  dream,  purposely  prolonged  and  sustained. 
Always  inventing  scenes,  scene-painters,  and  actors,  their  days 
glide  away  in  fictions,  and  in  their  childish  fancies  they  are 
almost  poets."2 

Far  from  discouraging  this  poetic  instinct  of  the  child, 
our  only  thought  should  be  to  give  it  free  play.  Thus, 
when  he  is  weary  of  inventing  fictions  for  himself,  let  us 

1  M.  Egger,  op.  tit.,  p.  13. 

a  Madame  de  Saussure,  I.,  III.,  Chap.  V. 


148  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

purposely  furnish  him  with  them.  Let  us  tell  him  those 
fabulous  stories  for  which  he  is  so  hungry.  Let  us  control 
his  taste  for  imaginary  things  so  as  to  direct  it  in  our  own 
way,  and  in  this  way  let  us  superadd  to  the  spontaneous 
development  of  the  childish  imagination  the  new  excitation 
which  comes  from  the  imagination  of  another. 

147.  TALES.  —  The  austere  Kant  excludes  tales  from 
education.  It  is  impossible  to  assent  to  his  opinion.  Tales 
bring  joy  to  the  spirit  of  the  child,  and  joy  forms  a  part  of 
intellectual  hygiene.  Moreover,  they  arouse  the  intelligence, 
and,  as  Mr.  Sully  observes,  the  child  who  at  home  takes 
most  delight  in  listening  to  stories  will,  other  things  being 
equal,  do  the  best  at  school.  Have  no  fear,  then,  of  tales, 
real  tales,  even  of  those  which  have  no  moral  pretension  and 
conceal  no  serious  lesson  under  their  pleasing  fictions. 

"  When  stories  are  told  children,"  says  Mile.  Chalamet,  "  why 
not  do  it  simply  for  the  purpose  of  amusing  them  ?  Why  not 
be  satisfied  with  telling  a  story  for  the  story's  sake,  to  satisfy 
the  craving  of  the  imagination  for  food?"1 

It  is  not  claiming  enough,  however,  to  recommend  tales 
simply  as  amusements.  If  they  are  carefully  chosen  and 
are  simple,  delicate,  and  chaste,  if  there  is  nothing  in  them 
that  is  gross  or  in  bad  taste,  stories  will  have  a  higher  effect ; 
they  will  be  for  the  teacher  a  sure  means  of  fixing  the  atten- 
tion by  interesting  it ;  they  will  be  an  allurement  to  future 
studies,  and  also  a  preparation  for  the  understanding  of  real 
poetry,  to  which  it  is  important  that  no  man  should  be  a 
stranger.2 

1  L'Ecole  maternelle,  p.  234. 

2  "  What  is  the  origin  of  the  singular  taste  that  men  have  for 
fairy  stories  1    Is  it  because    falsehood  is  pleasanter    than  truth  ? 
No ;  fairy  stories  are  not  falsehoods,  and  the  child  who  is  amused 
or  frightened  by   them  is  not  deceived  by    them    for  an    instant. 


CULTURE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.         149 

148.  NARRATIVES. — But  it  would  be  an  error  to  think 
that  the  childish  imagination  can  be  exercised  only  by  nour- 
ishing it  on  fictions,  by  alluring  it  into  fairy-land.  The 
imagination  may  be  as  well  applied,  and  even  with  greater 
profit,  to  what  is  actually  real. 

"By  far  the  most  useful  exercise  of  this  faculty  is  when  it 
buckles  itself  to  realities ;  and  this  I  advise  the  student 
chiefly  to  cultivate.  There  is  no  need  of  going  to  romances 
for  pictures  of  human  character  and  fortune  calculated  to 
please  the  fancy  and  elevate  the  imagination.  The  life  of 
Alexander  the  Great,  of  Martin  Luther,  of  Gustavus  Adolphus, 
or  any  of  those  notable  characters  on  the  great  stage  of  the 
world  who  incarnate  the  history  which  they  create,  is  for  this 
purpose  of  more  educational  value  than  the  best  novel  that 
ever  was  written,  or  even  the  best  poetry."1 

In  truth,  history  would  be  unintelligible  without  imagina- 
tion. In  order  that  it  may  instruct  the  child,  it  must  be 
like  a  series  of  pictures  passing  before  his  eyes,  and  his 
mind  must  dwell  upon  them  as  in  a  museum,  where  the 
attention  is  fixed  now  upon  the  portraits  of  great  men  and 
now  upon  the  countries  where  the  historical  events  have 
occurred. 

As  soon  as  possible,  therefore,  we  should  pass  from  purely 
fictitious  stories  to  narratives  which  are  truthfully  exact ; 
but  in  these  narratives  let  us  speak  to  the  child  in  the 
language  of  the  imagination, — that  language  in  which,  as  it 
is  said,  the  words  have  color.  Let  us  expect  no  good  result 
from  instruction  that  is  always  dry  and  abstract,  where  the 
brilliant  picture  and  vivid  painting  never  come  to  animate 
and  embellish  facts. 

Stories  are  the  ideal,  something  truer  than  the  actual  truth,  the 
triumph    of   the    good,   the  beautiful,    and  the  true."    (Laboulaye, 
Introduction  to  the   Contes  bleus.) 
1  Black  ie,  op.  tit.,  p.  13. 


150  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

149.  NECESSITY  OF  POETRY.  —  Rousseau,  as  we  have  said, 
would  have  us  present  to  the  child  only  the  naked  truth. 
This  would  be  to  exclude  him  forever  from  the  enjoyment  of 
poetry,  which  is  made  of  fictions,  and  where  the  truth  is 
always  veiled.  Certain  positive  spirits  of  our  day  might 
perhaps  put  up  with  this  impoverishment  of  the  imagination, 
but  for  ourselves  we  could  not  submit  to  such  a  sacrifice. 
There  never  will  be  enough  poetry  in  the  world,  I  do  not 
say  simply  to  embellish  and  cheer  existence,  but  to  elevate 
and  ennoble  it.  Popular  education  cannot  dispense  with  it, 
and  it  is  especially  in  the  common  schools  that  we  must  open 
wide  the  doors  to  the  poets. 

"  It  is  in  common  school  instruction  more  than  in  any  other 
that  fiction  is  beneficent,  indispensable,  and  should  have  a 
large  place.  There,  where  the  culture  is  perforce  limited  to  what 
is  strictly  necessary,  aims  only  at  the  useful,  the  practical,  and 
ends  early  to  give  place  to  the  positive  needs  of  life,  —  it  is 
there  especially  that  it  is  important  to  throw  a  pure  ray  of 
poesy  that  may  glitter,  if  possible,  forever.  For  the  child  of 
the  higher  classes  life,  with  its  natural  revelations,  books, 
travel,  the  theatre,  works  of  art,  intellectual  associations,  will 
perhaps  end  in  repairing  the  errors  or  supplying  the  deficiencies 
of  early  education ;  but  for  the  pupil  of  the  common  school,  life 
the  most  often  holds  in  reserve  only  a  long  lesson  of  hard  ex- 
perience, of  dreary  economy,  and  of  prosy  calculation.  If  light 
is  to  cheer  such  an  one,  it  must  come  from  you.  This  is  why 
it  must  be  given  him,  and  it  must  be  as  brilliant  as  possible. 
Verily  the  human  soul  is  so  constituted  that  it  cannot  dispense 
with  fiction,  or,  even  if  you  prefer  it,  with  an  ideal  world.  Save 
it  from  the  stupid  and  dangerous  marvels  of  superstition,  — 
nothing  is  wiser ;  but  do  your  very  best'  to  supply  its  place.  If 
you  do  not,  one  of  two  things  will  happen.  You  will  either 
succeed  in  shriveling  the  soul  and  in  drying  up  the  source  of 
inner  poesy,  or,  what  happens  much  more  frequently,  you  will 
snatch  it  from  one  dream  only  to  plunge  it  into  another,  but 
perchance  a  still  more  dangerous  one.  Whoever  has  reflected  on 


CULTURE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.         151 

the   prodigious  credulity   of   the   socialistic   utopist   will   easily 
comprehend  our  thought."  l 

150.  ROMANCES.  —  Romances  are  the  fairy  tales  of  mature 
age,  and  grown  persons  find  as  much  delight  in  them  as  a 
child  does  in  the  story  of  Cinderella  or  of  the  ass's  hide. 
But  without  withholding  them  entirely  from  children,  the 
reading  of  them  must  be  carefully  guarded.     In  every  case, 
those  that  are  put  into  the  hands  of  children  must  be  selected 
with   scrupulous    care.     Moral   stories,    like   most   English 
romances ;  scientific  stories,  like  those  of  Jules  Verne ;  and 
even  romances  of  pure  imagination,  may  be  read  without 
danger,  and  even  with  profit. 

151.  PERSONAL    CREATIONS  OF  THE  CHILDISH  IMAGINA- 
TION.—  The  imagination  of  the  child  is  not  merely  a  con- 
templative faculty  which  is  delighted  with  the  pretty  stories 
and  inventions  of  others ;  but  it  is  also  an  active  faculty 
which  needs  to  create  on  its  own  account,  which  manifests 
itself  by  real  productions,  by  personal  constructions,  at  first 
in  play  and  later  in  exercises  in  literary  composition  and  in 
drawing. 

Before  Froebel,  Comenius  had  noticed  that  "  children  love 
to  build  houses  out  of  clay,  chips,  or  stones." 
The  Pere  Girard  writes : 

"The  creative  imagination,  under  the  form  of  a  mania  for 
constructing  or  for  destroying,  is  already  apparent  in  tender 
years;  for  if  the  little  child  wishes  to  give  proof  of  his  power 
to  destroy,  he  loves  also  to  produce,  in  his  way,  what  is  new 
and  beautiful.  Notice  how  he  arranges  his  little  soldiers,  his 
houses,  his  sheep,  and  how  he  delights  in  his  new  combinations. 
He  calls  his  mother  that  she  too  may  enjoy  them."8 

1  Article  Fiction,  by  Dr.  Elie  Pccaut,  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  Peda- 
gogic. 

2  The  Pere  Girard,  Ik  I'Enseignement  rcgulier  de  la  langue  mater- 
neUe,  I.,  III.,  p.  88. 


'152  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

152.  THE  IMAGINATION  IN  PLAY.  — It  is  in  play  that  the 
child  first  gives  proof  of  his  nascent  imagination.  There 
he  invents,  combines  at  leisure,  and  freely  abandons  himself 
to  the  caprices  of  his  fancy. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  playthings  which  most  captivate 
the  child  are  not  those  elaborate  toys  which,  by  their  very 
perfection,  leave  his  talent  for  invention  nothing  to  do,  but 
rather  those  which  the  best  lend  themselves  to  the  develop- 
ment of  his  personal  activity. 

"  The  child  is  ever  intent  on  creating.  A  hole  in  the  ground 
is  a  creation.  Out  of  that  dirt  which  comes  from  the  hole,  and 
which  he  heaps  with  his  hands,  the  child  raises  mountains  that 
appear  to  him  of  an  incalculable  height.  A  heap  of  dust  rep- 
resents the  architecture  of  fairies. 

"  The  penny  doll  which  the  child  fancies  to  be  so  beautiful 
produces  the  same  mirage. 

"  The  other,  the  rich  doll  arrayed  in  silk,  needs  nothing,  and 
the  child,  conscious  of  this,  disdains  it.  But  that  little  creature 
whose  only  dower  is  its  blue  eyes,  its  placid  face,  its  red  cheeks, 
and  the  eternal  smile  on  its  cherry  lips,  what  a  power  of  imagi- 
nation is  required  to  dress  it  in  a  rag  of  calico  which  shall  be 
its  robe,  and  a  bit  of  tulle  which  shall  be  its  neckerchief  1 

"  The  penny  doll  develops  the  imagination  of  the  child,  just 
as  of  yore  the  poet  developed  that  of  the  people."1 

To  the  same  effect  Madame  de  Saussure  calls  attention  to 
the  fact  that  "the  playthings  which  the  child  invents  are 
those  which  please  him  the  most ;"  and  M.  Egger  says : 
"  It  is  very  true  that  instead  of  the  toy  so  elaborate  in  form, 
the  child  often  prefers  something  rude  which  his  imagina- 
tion can  transform  according  to  his  fancy."2 

Let  us  be  slow  to  check  -the  child  in  the  free  and  frank 
expansion  of  his  imagination.  After  having  been  called 

1  M.  Champfleury,  Les  Enfants,  p.  154. 

2  M.  Egger,  op.  cit.,  p.  42. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   IMAGINATION.  153 

into  play  by  the  amusements  of  early  life,  it  will  be  found 
ready  for  serious  service  in  work  and  in  study. 

153.  EXERCISES  IN  LITERARY  COMPOSITION. — The  work 
of  literary  composition  no  doubt  calls  into  play  all  the  facul- 
ties of  the  mind,  memory,  judgment,  etc.  ;  but  the  imagina- 
tion also  plays  an  important  part,  especially  if  a  narrative  or 
a  description  is  to  be  written.     At  first  it  will  be  best  to 
make  an  appeal  simply  to  the  representative  imagination. 
The  little  story-teller,  with  reference  to  such  or  such  an  in- 
cident of  his  life,  will  tell  what  he  has  seen,  and  will  have 
simply  to  show  that  he  has  made  a  good  use  of  his  eyes. 
But  gradually  he  will  be  accustomed  to  do  more  than  this, — 
to  invent,  of  his  own  accord  to  combine  imaginary  events. 
Provided  we  adapt  the  subjects  to  the  age  of  the  child,  draw 
them  from  his  own  experience,  and  put  him  in  a  condition 
to  find  in  his  own  recollections  the  materials  of  his  composi- 
tion, he  will  joyfully  devote  himself  to  this  personal  labor. 

154.  DRAWING  AND  THE  ARTS.  —  Let  us   also  mention, 
among  the  most  natural  exercises  of  the  imagination,  draw- 
ing, singing,  and  the  fine  arts  in  general. 

"With  Pestalozzi,"  says  Gauthey,  "  drawing  was  particularly 
an  art  of  the  imagination.  Provided  with  a  few  data,  his  pu- 
pils invented  all  sorts  of  figures  and  combinations  of  figures,  and 
they  often  reached  very  remarkable  results  in  respect  of  origi- 
nality and  elegance. 

"  Such  an  exercise  forms  the  taste  and  the  inventive  spirit  of 
children  destined  for  very  diverse  occupations.  The  gardener, 
the  locksmith,  the  cabinet-maker,  the  upholsterer,  the  mason, — 
all  have  need  of  the  inventive  faculty  as  well  as  of  taste.  To 
develop  their  powers  in  these  directions  is  to  prepare  them  for 
the  greatest  success  in  their  several  employments."1 

1  Gauthey,  op.  cit.,  I.,  p.  47. 


154  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

155.  DISCIPLINE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION. — From  what  has 
preceded  it  follows  that  there  is  a  true  scholastic  culture  of 
the  imagination.1  We  have  shown  in  particular  how  we 
may  develop  this  faculty ;  how  by  following  nature  we  may 
succeed  in  exciting  it.  Let  us  not  forget  that  the  imagina- 
tion must  also  be  disciplined,  tempered,  and  controlled. 

"  Nothing  is  more  dangerous,"  said  David  Hume,  "  than 
the  ardor  of  the  imagination.  Men  of  a  powerful  imagination 
may  be  compared  to  those  angels  whom  the  Scripture  repre- 
sents as  covering  their  eyes  with  their  wings." 

In  fact,  the  ardent  conceptions  of  the  imagination  obscure 
the  mind  and  conceal  from  us  the  truth.  They  exalt  the 
emotions  and  precipitate  us  into  the  madness  of  the  pas- 
sions. They  benumb  activity  and  throw  us  into  an  ener- 
vating revery.  As  a  tempered  imagination  is  useful  and 
necessary  for  equipoise  of  spirit,  by  just  so  much  is  an  excess 
of  imagination  fatal  to  good  sense,  to  energy  of  character, 
and  to  rectitude  of  conduct. 

What  means,  then,  may  education  employ  for  keeping  the 
imagination  within  proper  limits  ?  The  best  is  to  invoke  the 
aid  of  counter  forces.  To  repress  it  directly,  to  make  a 
straightforward  attack  upon  it,  is  a  difficult  thing.  It  is 
wiser  and  surer  to  find  a  counterpoise  for  it  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  reason  and  of  the  faculties  that  depend  upon  the 
reason.  If  you  have  to  do  with  a  child  of  exalted  and 
inflamed  imagination,  call  into  its  highest  activity  his  power 
of  observation  and  give  ceaseless  extension  to  his  positive 
knowledge.  You  will  never  temper  that  ardent  imagination, 
always  prone  to  escape  into  the  land  of  chimeras,  save  on 

1  M.  Rousselot  is  wrong  in  saying  that  "  such  is  the  nature 
of  the  imagination  that  it  is  not,  to  the  same  degree  as  the 
other  intellectual  faculties,  susceptihle  of  a  special  education,  I 
mean  of  a  scholastic  training."  (Pedagogic,  p.  125.) 


CULTURE   OF   THE   IMAGINATION.  155 

the  condition  of  putting  it  in  charge  of  a  vigorous  reason 
and  a  judicious  reflection,  and  of  giving  it,  so  to  speak,  good 
and  reliable  neighbors,  by  surrounding  it  with  strong  and 
disciplined  faculties  which  guard  it,  which  leave  their  im- 
press upon  it,  and  which,  while  developing  themselves,  con- 
strain it  to  become  one  of  them. 

Another  means  of  governing  the  imagination  and  keeping 
it  within  bounds  is  to  give  it  occupation,  to  furnish  it  with 
wholesome  and  nourishing  aliment,  so  that  it  may  not  go  in 
search  of  questionable  food. 

"To  exercise  the  imagination,"  says  Madame  Necker,  "is  as 
necessary  as  to  hold  it  in  check ;  and  perhaps  we  hold  it  in  check 
only  when  we  exercise  it." 

Whatever  we  may  do,  we  cannot  destroy  the  imagination ; 
it  is  not  possible  to  have  it  die  of  inanition.  It  would,  more- 
over, be  a  great  evil  to  dry  up  in  man  the  fruitful  source  of 
so  many  beautiml  and  noble  things.  But,  however  we  may 
regard  it,  the  imagination  is  certainly  an  indestructible  force 
of  the  soul.  It  is  better,  then,  to  have  it  for  us  than  against 
us ;  better  to  trace  for  it  its  channel  than  to  run  the  risk,  in 
abandoning  it  to  itself,  of  seeing  it  pass  its  bounds  in  reck- 
less disorder. 

"Madame  de  Saussure  has  shown  that  the  imagination,  that 
irresistible  power,  even  when  we  think  we  have  brought  it  un- 
der subjection,  takes  the  most  diverse  forms;  that  it  dissembles 
its  real  proportions,  and  with  a  secret  fire  animates  the  most 
wretched  passions.  If  you  refuse  it  air  and  liberty,  it  slinks 
off  into  the  depths  of  selfishness,  and,  under  coarse  features,  it 
becomes  avarice,  pusillanimity,  or  vanity. 

"We  also  need  to  see  with  what  benign  earnestness  Madame 
Necker  spies  its  first  movements  in  the  soul  of  the  child;  with 
what  intelligent  care  she  seeks  to  make  of  it,  from  the  very  mo- 
ment of  its  birth,  the  companion  of  the  truth  ;  how  she  surrounds 
it  with  whatever  can  establish  it  within  the  circle  of  the  good. 
The  studies  which  extend  our  intellectual  horizon,  the  spectacle 


156  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

of  nature  with  its  numberless  marvels,  the  emotions  of  the  fine 
arts,  —  nothing  seems  to  her  either  superfluous  or  dangerous 
for  directing  the  imagination  in  the  good  way.  She  fears  to  see 
it  escape,  through  lack  of  pleasures  sufficiently  enticing,  into 
other  routes."1 

156.  SOME  SPECIAL  DANGERS  TO  SHUN. — Besides  the 
great  dangers  to  which  a  giddy  or  impetuous  imagination 
subjects  the  mind  and  the  heart,  there  are,  even  in  the  ordi- 
nary development  of  a  mediocre  imagination,  certain  rocks 
to  shun. 

Thus  it  is  important  to  prevent  the  child  from  confounding 
fiction  with  reality.  It  sometimes  happens  to  us,  when  in 
our  sleep  we  have  been  fiercely  haunted  by  an  impassioned 
dream,  that  we  are  obliged  on  awakening  to  make  an  effort 
to  chase  away  the  phantoms  that  beset  our  rnind  and  to  con- 
vince ourselves  of  our  mistake.  The  child  who  as  yet  has 
no  exact  notions  on  the  real  and  the  possible,  who  is  almost 
absolutely  ignorant  of  the  laws  of  nature,  may  easily  be  the 
victim  of  an  analogous  dupery  of  his  imagination.  Take 
care  that  he  does  not  introduce  pure  fictions  into  the  woof 
of  his  thoughts  as  so  many  notions  that  are  true.  Let  us 
warn  him,  when  we  are  relating  a  fable  to  him,  not  to  give 
credence  to  our  account.  As  M.  Egger  says,  "Much  time 
is  necessary  for  the  notion  of  the  probable  to  be  formed  and 
fixed  in  his  mind."  Let  us  not  allow  ourselves  to  think  that 
the  very  strangeness  of  our  inventions  is  a  sufficient  guar- 
anty, and  that  it  foils  the  credulity  of  the  child. 

The  excessive  credulity  of  the  child  is  a  sufficient  reason 
why  we  should  proscribe  all  terrifying  stories,  such  as  those 
of  the  black  man,  which  unskilful  and  unwise  teachers  use 
in  order  to  govern  the  child. 

"One  of  the  things  we  most  often  forget  is  the  effect  of  en- 

1  Preface  to  the  8th  edition  of  the  Education  progressive. 


CULTURE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.  157 

tire  ignorance.  We  call  natural  what  we  have  already  seen, 
and  we  do  not  perceive  that  for  the  child  who  has  seen  nothing, 
everything  is  equally  natural.  For  him  the  possible  is  without 
limits." l 

157.  REVERT. — Another  vicious  tendency  of  the  imagi- 
nation  is  to  lose   itself   in   vague   contemplations,    and   to 
resign  itself  to  indolent  and  listless  reveries.     How  often  are 
we  turned  aside  from  serious  attention,  and  from  definite 
and  determined  action,  by  the  uncertain  phantoms  which  are 
floating  in  our  mind? 

Revery  may  become  a  disease  of  the  intelligence.  Of 
course  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  there  can  be  completely 
eliminated,  even  from  the  most  studious  and  thoughtful  con- 
sciousness, those  parasitic  conceptions  of  the  imagination, 
any  more  than  we  can  entirely  extirpate  noxious  weeds  from 
the  best  cultivated  field.  But  for  all  that  we  must  prevent 
revery  from  degenerating  into  a  habit,  and  for  this  purpose 
we  must  as  much  as  possible  occupy  the  mind  with  the  labor 
of  consecutive  and  sustained  reflection  ;  we  must  furnish  the 
imagination  with  substantial  aliment,  such  as  beautiful  verses 
which  have  been  learned  by  heart,  and  grand  deeds  which 
occur  to  the  memory  the  instant  the  mind  has  a  moment's 
leisure.  It  is  especially  the  unoccupied  imagination  that  is 
disposed  to  revery.  Give  the  imagination  and  the  other 
faculties  work  to  do,  and  you  will  cure  the  child  of  revery, 
that  indolence  of  the  intelligence. 

158.  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  IMAGINATION.  —  One  will  per- 
haps be  astonished  at  the  importance  which  we  have  ascribed 
to  the  culture  of  the  imagination.     No  doubt  this  faculty 
cannot  be  compared,  for   the   services   it  renders,    to  the 
memory  or  the  judgment.     It  is  not  to  the  same  degree  a  ped- 

1  Madame  de  Saussurp,  op.  cit ,  I.,  III.,  Chap.  V. 


158  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

agogic  faculty ;  but  we  shall  never  concede  to  positive  and 
exclusively  scientific  thinkers  that  there  can  be  a  possibilit}7 
of  sacrificing  it.  In  all  ages  an  important  place  has  justly 
been  given  to  it  in  instruction.  In  fact,  the  literary  compo- 
sitions in  use  in  colleges  are  in  part  but  exercises  of  the  im- 
agination. Let  these  be  restricted  in  order  to  extend  by  so 
much  the  domain  of  real  and  exact  knowledge,  of  facts  and 
practical  instruction.  We  are  quite  willing  that  this  should 
be  done,  but  pray  do  not  presume  to  suppress  them. 

"  I  much  fear,"  says  Mr.  Blackie,  "  neither  teachers  nor  schol- 
ars are  sufficiently  impressed  with  the  importance  of  a  proper 
training  of  the  imagination.  .  .  It  is  the  enemy  of  science 
only  when  it  acts  without  reason,  — that  is,  arbitrarily  and  whim- 
sically; with  reason  it  is  often  the  best  and  the  most  indis- 
pensable of  allies."1 

With  certain  children  whose  minds  are  languid  and  inac- 
tive, who  are  "born  old,"  it  is  not  enough  to  exercise  the 
imagination.  It  must  be  stimulated,  not  merely  to  awaken 
them  to  the  poetic  life,  but  also  in  the  more  modest  interest 
of  their  success  in  practical  affairs.  In  all  cases  the  imagi- 
nation is  one  of  the  stimulants  of  activity,  the  inspirer  of 
happy  inventions,  or  at  least  the  cause  of  useful  expedients. 

1  Blackie,  op.  cit.,  pp.  12,  18. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

THE    FACULTIES  OF  REFLECTION,  JUDGMENT,  ABSTRAC- 
TION, REASONING. 

159.  JUDGMENT  AND  REASONING.  — To  judge  and  to  reason 
are  distinct  operations  of  the  mind,  irreducible  to  any  other. 
In  the  activity  of  the  intelligence  there  are  three  degrees, 
three  essential  moments :  conceiving  or  having  ideas,  judg- 
ing or  associating  conceptions,  reasoning  or  combining  judg- 
ments.    Just  as  judgment  is  the  coupling  of  two  ideas  united 
by  an  act  of  affirmation  expressed  by  the  verb  to  be,  so  rea- 
soning is  a  sequence  or  a  series  of  judgments  united  one  with 
another  in  such  a  way  that  the  last  seems  to  be  the  legiti- 
mate  conclusion   and  necessary  consequence  of  those  that 
precede. 

160.  DEFINITION   OF  JUDGMENT. — Judgment,  in  its  psy- 
chological acceptation,  is  the  essential  act  of  thought,  the 
life,  so  to  speak,  of  the  mind.     It  is  in  the  judgment  that 
ideas  are  united  and  made  alive  ;  it  is  in  the  proposition,  the 
verbal  expression  of  the  judgment,  that  words,  the  signs  of 
ideas,  are  brought  together  and  take  bodily  form. 

The  judgment,  moreover,  dominates  and  embraces  the 
other  operations  of  the  mind.  In  fact,  judgments  are  the 
source  of  our  ideas,  and  they  also  serve  as  conclusions  to 
our  reasonings. 

The  perceptions  of  the  senses  and  of  the  consciousness 
supply  us  with  ready-made  judgments,  —  primitive  judg- 

159 


160  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

ments,  so  to  speak,  —  from  which  the  mind  detaches,  either 
immediately  particular  ideas,  or,  by  a  slow  process  of  ab- 
straction, general  ideas. 

But  there  are  also  reflective  judgments,  which  suppose  an 
attentive  comparison  of  ideas  previously  acquired,  and  in 
which  there  is  always  mingled  a  beginning  of  reasoning,  if 
not  a  complete  and  formal  reasoning. 

161.  DIFFERENT  SENSES  OF  THE  WORD  JUDGMENT.  —  It  is, 
then,  in  seizing  the  relations  of  ideas  that  consists  the  essen- 
tial function  of  what  Rousseau  called  the  "judicial  faculty." 
But  in  ordinary  usage  the  word  judgment  is  often  diverted 
from  its  psychological  meaning. 

Thus  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure  uses  the  term  judgment 
to  signify  nothing  more  than  practical  sense,  good  sense 
applied  to  the  affairs  of  real  life. 

"What  it  is  very  essential  to  develop,"  she  says,  "is  that 
particular  branch  of  the  faculty  of  reasoning  which  is  appli- 
cable to  the  conduct  of  life,  —  that  which  we  are  accustomed 
to  call  judgment." l 

This  is  to  forget  that  the  judgment  is  also  employed  in  the 
sciences  and  in  speculative  research,  and  that  the  observer, 
the  scientist,  and  the  philosopher  judge  no  less  than  the  man 
of  action. 

Another  more  common  use  of  the  word  judgment  consists 
in  construing  it  in  a  still  more  restricted  sense,  as  the  syn- 
onym of  good  judgment.  Language  is  easily  optimistic, 
and  often  gives  to  words  their  most  favorable  meaning.  To 
say  of  some  one  that  he  has  good  judgment  is  to  affirm  that 
he  has  an  accurate  mind ;  that  he  is  deceived  less  often 
than  others ;  that  he  has,  as  it  were,  a  natural  affinity  for 
the  truth ;  that  he  weighs  things  surely  and  well.  And 

1  De  I' Education  progressive,  I.,  VI.,  Ch.  VI. 


THE  FACULTIES  OP  REFLECTION.      161 

this,  of  course,  when  it  is  a  question  of  judgments  that 
demand  penetration  and  discernment.  We  do  not  say  that 
a  man  has  judgment  because  he  is  capable  of  affirming  that 
snow  is  white  or  that  fire  burns. 

162.  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  JUDGMENT. — It  is  in  this  sense 
that  the  Port  Royal  logic  commends  the  judgment  as  the 
master  quality  of  the  mind. 

"  There  is  nothing  more  estimable  than  good  sense  and  ac- 
curacy of  mind  in  the  discernment  of  the  true  and  the  false.  All 
the  other  qualities  of  the  mind  have  limited  applications,  but 
exactness  of  reason  is  universally  useful  in  all  stations  and  in 
all  the  employments  of  life.  ...  So  the  principal  endeavor  should 
be  to  form  one's  judgment  and  make  it  as  accurate  as  it  can  be ; 
and  to  this  end  should  tend  the  greatest  part  of  our  studies. 
We  use  the  reason  as  an  instrument  for  acquiring  the  sciences, 
and,  vice  versa,  we  should  make  use  of  the  sciences  as  instru- 
ments for  perfecting  the  reason,  accuracy  of  mind  being  in- 
finitely more  valuable  than  all  the  speculative  knowledge  to 
which  we  can  attain  by  means  of  the  most  accurate  and  well- 
established  sciences." 

Port  Royal  certainly  puts  too  low  an  estimate  on  the 
sciences  and  their  positive  results,  the  knowledge  which  they 
transmit ;  but  nevertheless  there  is  no  exaggeration  in  de- 
claring that  the  purpose  of  all  study  is  the  formation  of  the 
judgment,  and  that  all  the  other  faculties  should  be  held 
subordinate  to  the  judgment.  Though  having  a  great  mem- 
ory, we  may  be  incapable  of  getting  on  in  life,  and  having 
a  vivid  imagination,  there  is  ever  danger  of  going  astray  ; 
but  endowed  with  great  judgment  we  move  squarely  forward, 
and  there  is  no  difficulty  we  cannot  surmount. 

103.  CULTURE  OF  THE  JUDGMENT.  —  So,  since  the  days  of 
Montaigne  and  Port  Royal,  the  culture  of  the  judgment  has 
become,  so  to  speak,  the  watchword  of  French  pedagogy. 


162  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

Even  the  most  refractory  have  come  to  comprehend  the  im- 
portance of  the  judgment.  In  the  preface  to  the  new  edition 
of  the  Conduite  des  Ecoles  chretiennes  (1860),  the  Frere 
Phillip  expresses  himself  thus : 

"  Of  late  years  elementary  instruction  has  assumed  a  particu- 
lar feature  which  we  must  take  into  account.  Proposing  as  its 
chief  end  the  formation  of  the  pupil's  judgment,  it  gives  less 
importance  than  heretofore  to  the  culture  of  the  memory ;  it 
makes  especial  use  of  methods  which  call  into  play  the  intelli- 
gence and  lead  the  child  to  reflect,  to  take  account  of  facts,  and 
to  release  him  from  the  domain  of  words  in  order  to  introduce 
him  into  that  of  ideas." 

164.  JUDGMENT  IN  THE  CHILD. — Judgment  being  insepa- 
rable from  thought,  the  infant  judges  at  a  very  early  period 
of  its  life.  Its  first  perceptions  are  already  judgments,  the 
affirmation  of  what  it  sees  and  what  it  hears.  It  is  not  yet 
capable  of  reflective  judgments,  but  it  is  of  those  spon- 
taneous judgments  which  are  but  the  immediate  adhesion  of 
the  mind  to  a  perceived  truth.  Long  before  it  is  able  to 
speak,  perception  determines  for  it  little  beliefs  manifested 
by  its  gestures,  its  smiles,  its  movements.  It  judges  that 
the  candle  burns  when  it  has  once  been  burned,  and  it  draws 
back  to  avoid  it.  It  judges  that  an  object  is  within  its 
reach,  when  it  reaches  out  its  hand  to  seize  it.  Doubtless 
it  is  often  deceived  in  this  appreciation  of  distance,  but  this 
error  is  also  a  judgment. 

"We  may  see  by  the  various  methods  which  young  children 
employ  to  reach  what  is  above  them,  to  drag,  to  hurt,  to  lift 
different  bodies,  that  they  reason,  —  that  is  to  say,  that  they  adapt 
means  to  an  end,  before  they  can  explain  their  own  designs  in 
words."  * 

We  know,  however,  that  the  child,  in  his  first  attempts  at 
1  Miss  Edgeworth,  Practical  Education  (London :  1811),  II.,  p.  332. 


THE  FACULTIES   OF   REFLECTION.  163 

speaking,  does  not  at  once  succeed  in  giving  an  exact  and 
complete  expression  to  bis  judgments.  Do  not  demand  of 
him  propositions  in  regular  form.  He  usually  suppresses 
the  verb  to  be,  that  logical  copula  of  ideas  in  a  sentence. 
The  verb  to  be  is,  in  some  sort,  an  abstract  verb.  The 
child  prefers  attributive  verbs,  which  are  concrete.  In  de- 
fault of  an  actual  verb,  he  invents  one,  as  by  transforming 
an  adjective  into  a  verb.  He  will  say,  Paul  bads,  instead 
of  Paul  is  bad.  The  most  often  his  judgment,  when  ex- 
pressed, will  be  but  a  simple  juxtaposition  of  subject  and 
attribute,  as  Paul  wise,  Paul  bad.  His  repugnance  at  em- 
ploying the  verb  to  be  is  equaled  only  by  his  awkwardness 
in  making  use  of  it ;  and  the  same  defect  has  been  observed 
in  the  case  of  deaf-mutes,  who  when  learning  to  write  usually 
employ  expressions  like  these :  /  am  eat  bread,  for,  /  eat 
bread.  But  it  must  not  be  inferred  from  this  insufficiency  of 
language  that  judgment  is  incomplete  in  the  child.  It  is 
only  the  verbal  expression  that  is  at  fault.  The  child  men- 
tioned by  M.  Taine,  who  instead  of  saying,  Le  soleil  se 
couche,  said,  fa  brule,  coucou  (fa  brule,  something  brilliant, 
like  fire ;  coucou,  the  act  of  setting)  might  have  employed 
strange  expressions,  but  he  nevertheless  formulated  a  very 
definite  judgment. 

165.  REFLECTIVE  JUDGMENTS. — It  is  more  difficult  to  say 
at  what  period  in  the  life  of  the  child  the  faculty  of  reflective 
judgment  is  developed.  In  order  to  attain  this  end  it  is 
necessary  that  the  mind  shall  have  ceased  to  be  at  the  mercy 
of  sensible  perceptions,  that  it  shall  have  gained  possession 
of  itself,  that  it  shall  have  become  capable  of  attention,  and 
finally,  that  it  shall  have  at  its  disposal  not  merely  a  large 
number  of  particular  observations  which  are  the  materials  of 
its  reflections,  but  also  of  general  ideas  which  supply  it  with 
terms  of.  comparison. 


164  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

The  child  is  very  prompt  to  seize  resemblances,  and  his 
first  personal  judgments  are  founded- on  analogies,  and  most 
often  these  are  superficial.  M.  Egger  cites  some  interesting 
examples  of  these. 

"The  son  of  a  learned  grammarian,  of  the  age  of  five 
and  a  half  years,  said  to  his  father,  'Are  there  feminine  verbs? 
Why  so  ?  Pondre  is  a  feminine  verb,  for  we  always  say  elle  (she) 
pond,  never  il  (he)  pond.' " 

"At  the  age  of  four  years  and  two  months  Emile  sees  that 
the  window  of  a  smoking-room  is  closed.  He  asks  how  the 
smoke  will  escape,  and  replies  by  pointing  out  the  cracks  left 
even  when  the  window  is  closed.  .  .  '  For,'  says  he,  '  the  smoke 
is  very  small ;  it  is  like  water ;  when  I  put  water  in  my  hands 
it  goes  through  there  ' ;  and  he  points  out  the  interstices  between 
his  fingers." 

166.  EARLIEST  EDUCATION.  —  There  is  hardly  any  oppor- 
tunity for  the  intervention  of  the  teacher  in  the  elementary 
development  of  the  child's  judgment.  That  negative  edu- 
cation which  Rousseau  preached,  but  which  he  was  wrong  in 
prolonging  too  far,  —  that  which  consists  in  letting  nature 
have  her  way,  and  in  simply  preventing  any  evil  influence 
from  altering  the  normal  course,  —  negative  education  is 
admirably  adapted  to  the  first  years  of  childhood.  The  im- 
portant thing  at  this  age  is  not  so  much  to  act  upon  the 
judgment  by  a  special  training,  as  to  protect  it  from  the 
gross  errors  and  prejudices  which,  under  cover  of  the  igno- 
rance and  credulity  of  the  child,  install  themselves  too  easily 
in  the  mind,  and  there  gain  an  indestructible  hold. 

In  what  concerns  primitive  judgments,  there  is  no  other 
advice  to  give  than  that  which  relates  to  the  education  of  the 
senses,  whose  purpose  is  to  assure  the  clearness,  exactness, 
and  strength  of  the  perceptions.  As  to  the  judgments  of 
comparison,  which  indicate  that  real  mental  activity  has 
already  begun,  it  is  best  to  show  them  indulgence,  and  not 


THE   FACULTIES   OF   REFLECTION.  165 

to  be  incensed  because  they  are  simple  and  even  ridiculous, 
but  rather  to  encourage  them,  because,  however  childish 
they  may  appear,  they  are  the  prelude  of  an  infinitely  pre- 
cious quality,  the  liberty  of  the  spirit. 

167.  SCHOOL  TRAINING  OF  THE  JUDGMENT.  —  It  might  be 
said,  not  without  reason,  that  the  influence  of  the  family  is 
greater  than  that  of  the  school  upon  the  formation  of  the 
judgment.     In  fact,  in  the  relative  freedom  of  domestic  life, 
the  child,  left  a  little  more  to  himself,  finds  some  occasions 
to  observe  and  to  exercise  his  mind.     But  it  is  none  the  less 
true  that  the  child's  studies,  if  wisely  conducted,  are  ex- 
cellent  exercises  in  personal   reflection,  and   that  in  them 
there  is  a  school  training  of  the  judgment. 

168.  GENERAL  METHOD. — In  many  German  schools  it  is 
thought  well  to  devote  certain  hours  each  week  to  the  train- 
ing of   the  judgment.     We  do  not  quite  understand  what 
those  classes  in  judgment  can  be,  which  remind  us  of  the 
classes  in  virtue  imagined  by  the  Abbe   de   Saint  Pierre. 
Can  we  conceive  of  a  teacher  saying  to  his  pupils,  "Now, 
boys,  we  are  going  to  exercise  ourselves  in  judging?" 

No,  the  education  of  the  judgment  ought  not  to  be  sought 
in  special  lessons  ;  it  will  result  from  all  the  exercises  of  the 
school.  In  fact,  there  is  no  instruction  which  cannot  be 
employed,  in  the  hands  of  a  good  teacher,  in  provoking  the 
initiative  of  the  pupil,  in  calling  into  play  his  reflection,  and 
in  exciting  the  powers  of  the  mind.  If  you  resolutely  avoid 
the  processes  of  a  mechanical  instruction  and  of  a  passive 
education  ;  if  you  know  how  to  appeal  to  the  natural  activity 
of  the  child ;  if  you  encourage  him  by  your  questions  to 
think  for  himself;  if  you  "let  trot"  the  young  spirit  before 
you ;  the  judgment  of  your  pupil  will  be  developed  naturally, 
spontaneously,  just  as  all  the  powers  are  developed  when 


166  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

they  are  relieved  from  the  bonds  which  hamper  them,  and 
they  are  left  to  pursue  an  unobstructed  course.  The  more 
of  liberty  and  life  you  introduce  into  studies,  the  more  the 
pupil  will  exercise  his  judgment,  and  the  more,  consequently, 
he  will  develop  his  faculty  of  judging. 

169.  SPECIAL    METHODS. — There    are,    however,    some 
special  precautions  to  be  observed  in  forming  the  judgment, 
especially  in  the  case  of   the   youngest   children,    and   by 
reason  also  of  the  diversity  of  natures. 

The  judgment  of  the  child  is  often  timid,  and  it  must  be 
fortified.  It  is  sometimes  rash',  and  it  must  be  checked  and 
taught  discretion.  It  is  easy  for  it  to  be  inaccurate,  and  it 
must  be  disciplined. 

170.  LIBERTY  OF  JUDGMENT. — At  first  the  child  seems 
more  disposed  to  accept  with  docility  all  that  is  taught  him, 
than  to  manifest  judgments  of  his  own.     Just  as  he  has 
learned  to  speak  by  accurately  repeating  the  words  which  he 
has  gathered  from  the  lips  of  his  mother,  he  at  first  learns 
to  think  by  repeating  the  thoughts  of  others.     To  remedy 
this  inactivity  of  the  mind,  much  dependence  must  be  placed 
on  nature  and  on  progress  in  age.     When  he  has  passively 
acquired  a  certain  amount  of  knowledge,  the  child  will  of 
himself  come  to  compare  his  ideas  and  to  grasp  new  relations 
between  them.     The  duty  of  the  teacher  will  consist  chiefly 
in  promoting  in  the  child  this  natural  tendency,  in  aiding 
him  by  presenting   subjects   for  reflection   adapted  to  his 
tastes,  and  in  suggesting  to  him  easy  thoughts,  through  the 
comparison  of  similar  objects  or  through  the  contrast  of 
different  objects. 

But  if  it  is  desirable  that  the  teacher  know  how  to  stimu- 
late minds,  it  is  above  all  necessary  that  he  shun  whatever 
may  oppose  and  restrain  their  natural  expansion.  We  are. 


THE   FACULTIES   OF   REFLECTION.  167 

but  too  often  responsible  for  the  servility  of  mind  which  we 
condemn  in  our  children.  Hardly  have  they  ventured  an 
inaccurate  judgment  when  we  protest,  grow  angry,  and 
humiliate  them  by  remonstrances  too  harsh  and  too  strong ; 
in  a  word,  we  discourage  them,  and  for  not  having  been 
indulgent  enough  to  their  first  attempts,  we  disqualify  them 
for  thinking,  or  at  least  rob  them  of  the  desire  to  express 
their  thoughts.  Coldly  greeted  when  they  have  attempted 
to  make  themselves  understood,  they  will  no  longer  dare  to 
open  their  mouths ;  ever  after  they  will  remain  shy ;  they 
will  be  inert  and  passive,  like  children  who  no  longer  ven- 
ture to  walk,  if  scolded  too  severely  when  they  make  their 
first  false  step. 

It  is  necessary,  then,  to  fortify  by  constant  stimulation  the 
child's  liberty  of  judgment,  and  to  be  careful  not  to  dis- 
courage it  when  it  goes  astray,  by  ridicule  or  reprimands. 

171.  DISCRETION  IN  JUDGMENT.  —  But  no  sooner  have  we 
succeeded  in  training  the  personal  judgment  of  the  child 
than  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against  striking  another 
rock, — the  misuse  of  judgment,  or  rashness  in  judgment. 
It  is  always  thus  in  education ;  the  most  precious  qualities 
are  no  sooner  developed  than  they  are  liable,  if  not  watched, 
to  engender  grave  faults.  When  a  child  has  once  been  taught 
with  great  difficulty  to  speak,  a  new  anxiety  is  imposed  on 
the  instructor,  —  that  of  teaching  him  to  keep  silent.  And 
BO,  when  we  have  attained  the  important  end  of  sharpening 
the  intelligence  of  the  child,  we  must  be  on  our  guard  lest  it 
take  too  many  liberties,  lest  it  venture  upon  rash  judgments, 
lest  it  become  quizzing  and  loquacious.  And  then  there 
must  be  a  change  in  method ;  we  must  pursue  a  course 
almost  the  reverse  of  the  one  we  have  just  recommended, 
and  mildly  check  the  free  movement  which  we  had  provoked. 
The  educating  art,  like  military  tactics,  consists  of  marches 


168  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

and   countermarches,  vigorous  forward  movements  followed 
by  prudent  retreats. 

"  A  perplexing  problem  in  the  training  of  children,"  says  Mr. 
Sully,  "is  to  draw  the  line  between  excessive  individual  inde- 
pendence and  undue  deference  to  authority." J 

The  difficult  thing  is  not  to  cut  short  the  rashness  of  the 
child's  judgment ;  we  can  without  difficulty  make  him  blush 
at  his  presumption.  The  difficulty  is  in  convincing  him  of 
his  error,  without  throwing  him  into  a  confusion  which  would 
paralyze  his  courage. 

Even  when  he  deceives  himself  the  most  grossly,  let  him 
develop  his  little  thought,  and  try  to  comprehend  it.  And 
then  do  not  be  content  with  barely  telling  him  that  he  is 
mistaken,  but  show  him  by  apt  and  clear  explanations  in 
what  respect  and  in  what  way  he  has  been  deceived ;  lay 
before  him  the  causes  of  his  error ;  make  him  understand 
that  there  are  things  which  transcend  his  judgment,  and 
that  even  in  those  of  which  he  can  judge  he  ought  not  to 
do  so  until  after  having  carefully  reflected.  Finally,  while 
leading  him  back  to  the  truth  upon  the  particular  point  of 
his  mistake,  guard  him  against  falling  into  similar  errors 
upon  other  points,  through  the  fact  of  his  thoughtlessness 
and  lack  of  reflection. 

172.  ACCURACY  OF  JUDGMENT.  —  In  putting  the  child  on 
his  guard  against  his  disposition  to  form  judgments  on 
matters  of  which  he  is  ignorant,  or  of  forming  hasty  judg- 
ments on  things  which  he  knows,  much  has  already  been 
done  to  assure  the  accuracy  of  his  judgment.  In  fact,  the 
cause  of  inaccurate  judgments  is  most  often  either  igno- 
rance, or  thoughtlessness  and  precipitation.  Hold  the  judg- 
ment of  the  child  upon  the  things  he  knows  well,  and  he  will 

1  Sully,  op.  cit.,  p.  443. 


THE   FACULTIES   OF   REFLECTION.  169 

hardly  ever  be  deceived.     Be  sure  that  he  is  attentive,  and 
you  will  thus  diminish  the  chances  of  error. 

"  The  true  rule  for  forming  correct  judgments,"  said  Bossuet, 
"  is  to  judge  only  when  we  see  clearly ;  and  the  means  of  doing 
this  is  to  judge  with  great  attention." 

Another  way  of  forming  the  personal  judgment  of  the 
child  is  to  begin  by  giving  him  a  good  comprehension  of  the 
judgments  of  others ;  but  only  good  models  should  be  set 
before  him. 

But  here,  as  everywhere,  we  must  rely  upon  the  power  of 
example.  Present  to  the  pupil  only  judgments  which  are 
trustworthy,  and  which  have  been  rigorously  tested.  The 
terms  in  which  they  are  expressed  should  be  clearly  ex- 
plained to  him ;  he  should  be  obliged  to  consider  the  mean- 
ing of  whatever  he  studies ;  and  in  this  way  he  will  come 
insensibly  to  give  exactness  to  his  own  personal  judgments. 

173.  JUDGMENT  AND   ABSTRACTION.  —  A    judgment   is   a 
mental  construction,  and,  like  every  construction,  it  presup- 
poses  materials.     The  materials   of   judgments   are  ideas, 
either  particular  ideas  which  simple  perception  accumulates, 
or  abstract  and  general   ideas  which  the  mind  elaborates. 
Just  as  the  perfection  of  a  construction  depends  in  part  on 
the  quality  of  the  materials  which  are  employed  in  it,  so 
the  accuracy  of  a  judgment  is  determined  by  the  clearness 
and  precision  of  the  ideas  which  serve  to  form  it. 

Let  us,  then,  examine  by  what  means  the  educator  may 
assure  the  normal  and  rapid  development  of  the  faculties  of 
abstraction  and  generalization. 

174.  ABSTRACTION   AND   GENERALIZATION.  —  We   do   not 
separate  abstraction  and  generalization.     An  abstract  idea 
is  in  fact  at  the  same  time  a  general  idea,  —  the  idea  of 
a  quality  common  to  several  individuals,  or  the   idea  of  a 


170  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

group  of  individuals  which  resemble  one  another  by  one  or 
several  common  qualities,  —  for  example,  the  idea  of  reason, 
or  the  idea  of  man.  "We  do  not  generalize  save  as  we 
abstract,  and  vice  versa.  The  child  considers  apart  a  quality 
which  in  reality  is  united  to  other  qualities.  This  abstrac- 
tion results  either  from  an  unconscious  analysis  or  from  an 
attentive  and  reflective  analysis.  He  then  finds  this  same 
quality  in  other  objects ;  and  hence  he  is  led  to  grasp  in  one 
comprehensive  mental  glance,  either  that  general  quality  in 
itself,  or  the  persons  or  the  things  which  possess  it.  But 
this,  is  an  incomplete  description  of  the  mental  operations  of 
the  child ;  it  is  necessary  to  give  a  nearer  and  more  precise 
view  of  what  takes  place. 

175.  FORMATION  OF  GENERAL  AND  ABSTRACT  IDEAS. — 
Language  certainly  plays  .an  important  part  in  the  formation 
of  general  ideas.  This  is  not  saying  that  it  is  necessary  to 
coincide  entirely  with  the  absolute  opinion  of  philosophers 
who  assert  that  without  the  aid  of  words  the  child  would  be 
unable  to  grasp  the  .relations  of  things  ;  but  to  say  the  least, 
words  are  necessary  for  fixing  and  defining  abstract  ideas, 
and  for  permitting  the  facile  and  rapid  use  of  them. 

The  child  first  learns  a  word  which  has  been  pronounced 
in  his  hearing  and  which  designates  an  individual  and  deter- 
minate object, — the  word  papa,  for  example.  Thereafter  he 
will  apply  this  term  to  his  father,  and  also  to  other  persons. 

Let  a  gentleman  of  about  the  same  height,  with  a  strong 
voice  and  with  similar  clothes,  present  himself  to  him,  and 
he  will  also  address  him  by  the  name  papa.  The  word  was 
individual,  but  he  makes  it  general ;  he  employs  it  not  to 
designate  a  person,  but  to  express  a  class.1  There  is,  then, 

1  M.  Janet  justly  remarks  that  the  child  generalizes  the  word 
papa  more  readily  than  the  word  mamma. 


THE  FACULTIES   OF   REFLECTION.  171 

in  the  child  an  instinctive  tendency  to  generalize,  to  seize 
the  resemblances  of  things. 

Of  course,  if  the  child  generalizes  the  individual  words 
that  we  suggest  to  him,  he  also  generalizes,  and  for  a  better 
reason,  general  terms.  If  he  hears  the  term  white  applied 
to  the  paper  which  he  sees,  he  will  perhaps  individualize  this 
abstract  term  for  a  while,  and  in  his  mind  whiteness  will  be 
applied  at  first  only  to  paper,  —  it  will  be  exclusively  the 
whiteness  of  paper ;  but  the  child  will  soon  come  to  employ 
the  same  word  to  express  the  whiteness  of  all  other  white 
objects. 

176.  GENERAL  IDEAS  BEFORE  LANGUAGE.  —  Words    are 
thus   the   essential   agents   in    the   work   of  generalization, 
which  takes  place  very  early  in  the  mind  of  the  child ;  but 
careful    observation    proves  that   the   child   is    capable   of 
generalizing  even  before  he    has  learned  to  speak. 

It  could  not  be  otherwise,  since  animals  themselves  have 
the  rudiments  of  general  ideas.  Dogs,  for  example,  clearly 
distinguish  beggars,  at  whom  they  must  bark,  from  all  those 
who  are  not  beggars,  and  who  must  be  allowed  to  enter.  So 
the  infant  exhibits  a  preference  for  young  and  pretty  faces, 
and  thus  outlines  a  process  of  generalization.  M.  Perez 
mentions  the  case  of  a  child  eight  months  old,  that  had  for 
a  favorite  toy  a  tin  box  provided  with  an  opening  into  which 
he  stuffed  whatever  would  enter  it.  The  moment  any  object 
whatever  was  given  this  child,  he  would  turn  it  over  in  all 
directions  to  find  an  opening  in  it ;  "  he  thus  had  the  general 
idea  of  that  property  of  opening  and  capacity  which  he  had 
perceived  in  several  objects,  and  which  he  sought  for 
in  all."1 

177.  THE  CHILD'S    TENDENCY  TO  GENERALIZE. — How- 
1  M.  Perez,  Psychologic  de  1'enfant,  2d  ed.,  p.  234. 


172  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

ever,  it  is  when  the  child  has  learned  to  speak  that  his  instinct 
to  generalize  becomes  particularly  manifest.  As  we  have  said, 
he  has  a  marked  tendency,  by  reason  of  the  vivacity  of  his 
memory,  to  seize  resemblances,  and  even,  by  the  aid  of  his 
imagination,  to  invent  them.  He  generalizes  in  defiance  of 
every  rule,  of  every  established  classification.  He  con- 
structs new  classifications,  sometimes  very  original,  based  on 
superficial  analogies  and  far-fetched,  vague  resemblances. 

On  this  point  the  observers  of  children  cite  a  great  number 
of  examples.  An  English  child  who  had  learned  the  mean- 
ing of  the  word  quack  (duck),  employed  the  word  indifferently 
to  designate  water,  all  sorts  of  birds,  insects,  and  liquids, 
and  even  coins,  because  on  a  French  piece  of  money  he  had 
noticed  an  eagle.  These  indiscriminating  and  misleading 
generalizations  are  no  doubt  due,  in  the  first  place,  to  the 
poverty  of  the  child's  vocabulary.  The  child  is  like  a  man 
who,  not  having  many  dishes,  eats  all  parts  of  his  repast 
from  the  same  plate ;  likewise  he  forces  several  meanings 
into  one  single  word.  It  is  thus  that  the  Romans  called 
elephants  oxen  of  Lucania.  But  they  are  not  merely  reasons 
of  economy  that  govern  the  child.  If  he  transfers  words 
from  one  meaning  to  another,  it  is  because  he  has  a  marvel- 
ous aptitude  for  discovering  among  things  resemblances 
which  escape  even  the  perspicacity  of  the  mature  man. 

"  A  little  girl  two  and  a  half  years  old  had  on  her  neck  a 
consecrated  medal.  She  had  been  told,  '  It  is  the  good  God.'  One 
day,  seated  on  her  uncle's  knee,  she  took  his  eye-glass  and  said,  '  It 
is  my  uncle's  good  God.'  A  little  boy  a  year  old  had  traveled 
several  times  on  a  railroad.  The  engine  with  its  whistling 
and  smoke  had  struck  his  attention.  The  first  word  he  had 
pronounced  was  fafer  (chemin  de  fer) ;  and  after  that  a 
steamboat,  a  coffee-pot,  —  all  objects  that  hiss,  make  a  racket, 
throw  out  smoke,  —  were  for  him  fafers."  l 

1  M.  Taine,  De  I' Intelligence,  Tom.  II. 


THE   FACULTIES   OF  REFLECTION.  173 

178.  WHAT  ARE  WE  TO  THINK  OF  THE  CHILD'S  REPUG- 
NANCE FOR  ABSTRACTION  ?  —  The  first  pedagogical  conclusion 
that  can  properly  be  drawn  from  these  facts  is  that  the  repug- 
nance of  the  child  for  generalization  and  abstraction  is  only 
apparent.     What  he  does  not  like  is  abstractions  which  he 
cannot   resolve,  which  are   presented   to  him   too  early  or 
imposed  on  him  without  preparation,  —  abstractions  which 
he  does  not  comprehend,  because  he  has  not  conceived  them 
himself  by  a  spontaneous  effort  of  his  own  mind.     Put  him 
in  the  presence  of  things,  bring  together  before  him  objects 
of  the  same  kind,  and  his  instinct   to  generalize  will  readily 
find  free  scope.     In  order  to  teach  him  general  terms,  wait 
till  he  has  collected  experiences  enough,  and  has  had  under 
his   eyes   concrete   examples   enough    to   comprehend    with 
exactness  their  meaning.     Particularly  do  not  require  him 
all  at  once  to  make  abstractions  and  generalizations  in  the 
domain  of  moral  ideas.     Direct  this  reflection  towards  sen- 
sible things,  the  only  ones  which  are  as  yet  accessible  to 
his  intelligence. 

179.  ABUSE  OF  ABSTRACTION  IN  TEACHING. — For  a  long 
time  there  has  been  an  abuse  of  abstraction  in  teaching ; 
for  example,  in  grammar,  when  definitions  and  rules  have 
been  made  to  precede  examples,  and  when  in  general  the 
child  was  harassed  by  a  multitude  of  general  terms  which  he 
does  not  comprehend,  or  which  he  only  partially  compre- 
hends.    The  following  is  a  logical  order,  perhaps ;  but  it 
was   going  counter  to  the  order  of  nature.     This  vicious 
method  is  now  discountenanced.     Mr.  Bain  remarks  that  it 
is  now  a  rule  universally  recognized,  that  in  order  to  reach 
a  general  or  abstract  idea,  the  essential  preparation  is  a 
knowledge  of  the  particular  facts. 

180.  IMPORTANCE  OF  GENERAL  OR  ABSTRACT  IDEAS.  —  In 


174  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

order  to  react  against  the  abuse  of  abstraction,  it  is  not 
necessary  to  banish  it  from  the  school,  or  even  to  postpone 
it.  If  abstract  ideas  are  the  most  difficult  of  all  to  acquire, 
they  are  at  the  same  time  the  most  important.  Particular 
intuitions  have  no  value  save  on  one  condition,  that  they 
gradually  lead  the  mind  up  to  the  general  ideas  which  govern 
and  include  them.  Do  not  let  us  tarry  too  long  in  the  edu- 
cation of  the  senses,  which  should  really  be  but  an  intro- 
duction to  abstract  thought.  It  would  amount  to  nothing  to 
make  a  multitude  of  particular  objects  pass  before  the  eyes 
of  the  child,  if  at  the  same  time  he  were  not  made  to  form 
the  habit  of  generalization. 

181 .  DIFFICULTIES  OF  ABSTRACTION.  —  That  which  makes 
the  process  of  abstraction  complicated  and  difficult  for  the 
child  is  that  generalization  admits  of  different  degrees.  If 
it  were  a  question  merely  of  the  first  general  notions, —  those 
which  issue  spontaneously,  so  to  speak,  from  the  comparison 
of  objects  which  are  sensible  and  familiar  to  the  child,  —  his 
instinct,  as  we  have  said,  would  suffice  of  itself  to  lead  him 
there.  But  these  generalizations,  compared  one  with  an- 
other, give  rise  to  new  generalizations,  higher  and  more 
abstract.  As  a  rule,  we  are  not  careful  enough  to  make  the 
mind  ascend  these  different  steps  one  after  another ;  we 
neglect  the  intermediate  steps,  and  plunge  the  child  too 
quickly  into  the  highest  abstractions. 

The  difficulty  is  aggravated  by  reason  of  the  impossibility, 
in  respect  of  a  great  number  of  abstract  ideas,  of  presenting 
to  the  eyes  of  the  child  the  particular  objects  whose  relations 
they  express.  How  many  general  ideas  there  are  which  can 
be  communicated  to  the  child  only  through  words  !  And  he 
has  great  difficulty  in  understanding  these  words,  because 
they  surpass  the  range  of  his  imagination.  Now,  there  is  no 
lesson,  however  elementary  it  may  be,  either  in  grammar, 


THE  FACULTIES   OF   KEFLECTION.  175 

in  geography,  in  history,  or  in  arithmetic,  that  does  not 
require  the  use  of  a  great  number  of  those  abstract  terms, 
for  which  the  child  has  made  no  corresponding  intuitive 
preparation. 

In  a  word,  if  the  first  steps  in  the  field  of  generalization 
and  abstraction  are  easy  ;  if  the  child  takes  pleasure  in  classi- 
fying and  grouping  in  the  domain  of  material  objects  ;  prog- 
ress is  difficult,  and  there  is  required  a  real  intellectual 
effort  to  rise  to  higher  conceptions,  to  succeed  in  handling 
abstractions  themselves,  and  to  detach  them  from  every 
association  with  particular  objects  and  sensible  realities. 

182.  PEDAGOGICAL  RULES.  —  1.  The  first  rule,  as  we  have 
said,  is  that  abstraction  should  always  be  preceded  by  cor- 
responding intuitions.  It  is  necessary  to  follow  the  methods 
which  English  teachers  ^  recommend  under  the  title  of 
methods  of  juxtaposition  and  of  the  accumulation  of 
examples,  —  methods  which  consist  in  collecting  objects  ;  in 
placing  them  in  symmetrical  juxtaposition,  in  order  the 
better  to  bring  out  the  resemblances ;  in  multiplying  ex- 
amples, and  in  choosing  them  in  such  a  way  that  the  interest 
is  not  directed  to  their  particular  characteristics  and  that 
the  attention  is  made  to  bear  upon  their  relations. 

Mr.  Bain  dwells  on  the  choice  of  examples  in  these 
terms : 

"  The  number  and  the  character  of  objects,"  he  says,  "  must 
also  be  taken  into  account.  They  may  be  too  few,  or  they  may 
be  too  many ;  they  may  even  have  the  effect  of  obstructing  the 
growth  of  the  general  idea. 

"  The  selection  must  be  such  as  to  show  all  the  extreme  varie- 
ties. Identical  instances  are  not  to  be  accumulated ;  they 
merely  burden  the  mind.  Varying  instances  are  necessary  to 
show  the  quality  under  every  combination.  To  bring  home  the 
abstract  property  of  roundness,  or  the  circle,  we  must  present 
concrete  examples  in  varying  size,  color,  material,  situation, 


176  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

and  circumstances.  To  explain  a  building  we  must  cite  in- 
stances of  buildings  for  all  kinds  of  uses."  l 

Mr.  Bain  is  wrong  in  giving  the  first  place  to  extreme 
varieties.  It  is  better  to  present  to  the  child,  for  each  class 
of  objects,  average  specimens  in  which  the  characteristics 
common  to  the  whole  class  appear  in  some  relief,  and  are 
not  obscured  by  particulars  that  are  too  striking.  In  other 
words,  it  is  necessary  to  aid  the  child's  effort  at  generaliza- 
tion, by  assisting  his  mind  in  making  an  easy  transition 
from  one  object  to  another.  Extreme  varieties,  separated 
by  too  wide  an  interval,  would  certainly  hinder  the  percep- 
tion of  resemblances  ;  they  should  be  the  last  presentations 
made. 

As  to  the  number  of  examples,  it  varies  in  different  cases. 
Mr.  Bain  remarks  that  for  certain  notions,  as  that  of  a 
simple  quality,  —  weight,  for  example,  —  one  or  two  ex- 
amples are  sufficient,  while  it  is  necessary  to  collect  a  large 
number  to  give  an  exact  idea  of  large  classes  of  objects, 
such  as  houses,  plants,  etc. 

2.  A  second   rule   consists   in   graduating   the   generali- 
zations.2    It  is  necessary  that  the  child,  when  presented  with 
an  abstract  idea  of  the  first  grade,  should  be  able  to  indicate 
the  individuals  which  compose  it ;  but  it  is  also  necessary, 
when  he  rises  to  a  generalization  of  a  higher  degree,  that  he 
should  be  able  to  decompose  it  by  giving  an  account  of  the 
simpler,  more  elementary  ideas  which  serve  to  support   it. 
An  aggregate  of  abstract  ideas  is  like  a  vast  machine  whose 
parts  work  into  each  other.    In  order  that  the  machine  work, 
it  is  of  the  first  importance  that  no  part  be  wanting,  and  that 
all  the  intermediate  parts  be  in  their  place. 

3.  Finally,  it  is  necessary  to  guard  the  use  of  words,  to 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  193. 

2  See  the  article  Abstraction,  by  M.   Buisson,  in  the  Dictionnaire 
de  Pe'dagogfe. 


THE   FACULTIES   OF   REFLECTION.  177 

define  with  exactness  all  the  terms  which  we  employ  in  the 
instruction  of  the  child.  The  pupil  is  only  too  much  in- 
clined to  be  content  with  a  vague  and  confused  notion  of 
general  terms.  This  natural  indolence  should  be  corrected  ; 
the  pupil  should  be  enlightened  by  exact  definitions  ;  and  he 
should  be  required  to  give  proof  of  his  understanding,  either 
by  employing  synonymous  expressions  or  by  giving  par- 
ticular examples  included  under  the  abstraction  which  has 
been  defined. 

183.  REASONING.  —  The  process  of  abstraction,  of  gener- 
alization proper,    which  has  to   do  with  ideas  and  concep- 
tions, is  one    thing ;  and    reasoning,  which  associates   and 
combines  judgments,  is  quite  another.    It  is  not  required  to 
recall  in  this  place  what  the  psychologists  teach  us   of  the 
nature  of  this  operation  and  of  its  two  different  forms,  in- 
duction and  deduction.1     Nor  have  we  to  dwell  on  the  rules 
which  logic  prescribes  for  reasoning.     Our  object  is  simply 
to  show  how  education  develops  and  cultivates  the  child's 
power  of  reasoning. 

184.  IMPORTANCE  OF  REASONING.  —  It  is  easy  to  compre- 
hend the  importance  of  this  intellectual  operation.     Without 
reasoning,   knowledge  would   be  restricted    to   the    narrow 
circle  of  the  immediate  intuitions  of  the  reason  and  of  the 
direct  perceptions   of   experience ;  the   human   intelligence 
would  be  prohibited  from  passing  beyond  the  limited  horizon 
of  the  senses  and   of  consciousness,  and  of  conceiving  the 
general  laws  which  constitute  science,  and  by  means  of  which 
the   mind  embraces  the  entire  universe. 

On  the  other  hand,   we  must   not  forget  that  reasoning 
may  be  abused ;  that  too  much  logic  misleads  and  deceives 

1  See  our  article  Iliiijmnnement  in  the  Dictionnaire  dc  Pedagogic. 


178  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

us ;    and  finally,  that  what   Moliere  said   of   the   house  of 
the  Femmes  Savantes  may  as  truly  be  said  of  the  mind : 

"  How  reasoning  banishes  reason  from  it !  " 

185.  REASONING  IN  THE  CHILD.  — Locke  is  of  the  opinion 
that  the  child  is  capable  of  reasoning,  and  that  he  listens  to 
reason  as  soon  as  he  can  speak. 

Condillac,  a  disciple  of  Locke  in  philosophy,  is  inspired  by 
the  same  pedagogical  doctrine. 

"It  has  been  proved,"  he  says,  "that  the  faculty  of  reason- 
ing begins  as  soon  as  our  senses  begin  to  develop,  and  that  we 
have  an  early  use  of  our  senses  only  because  we  have  an  early 
use  of  our  reason.  .  .  .  The  faculties  of  the  understanding  are 
the  same  in  a  child  as  in  a  grown  man.  .  .  .  We  see  that 
children  begin  early  to  grasp  the  analogies  of  language.  If  they 
are  sometimes  deceived  in  this,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that 
they  have  reasoned." 

And  Condillac  goes  so  far  as  to  compare  this  instinctive 
initiation  of  the  child  into  his  native  language  with  the 
reasoning  of  Newton,  discovering  by  a  series  of  inductions 
and  deductions  the  system  of  the  world  ! 

Our  reply  to  Condillac  and  Locke  is  that  they  have  both 
failed  to  recognize  the  general  and  abstract  element  in 
reasoning,  and  that  they  confound  the  highest  forms  of  the 
highest  intellectual  operation  with  its  lower  forms,  with 
the  thoughtless  inferences  which  may  be  observed  even  in 
animals. 

Doubtless  there  is  a  sense  in  which  the  child  reasons ;  but 
he  does  this  almost  without  knowing  it,  almost  uncon- 
sciously. Moreover,  his  reasoning  bears  only  on  the  par- 
ticular and  sensible  objects  which  he  perceives  every  day. 
Do  not  require  him  to  reason  on  abstract  ideas.  When  he 
grasps  the  analogies  of  language  he  obeys  an  instinctive 
logic.  The  child  of  three  or  four  years  will  persist  in  say- 


THE  FACULTIES  OF  REFLECTION.          179 

ing  a  le  cheval,  a  le  jardin,  because  he  has  heard  people  say 
a  la  vache,  a  la  promenade;  he  will  reduce  the  number  of 
conjugations  and  say  batter  instead  of  battre,  because  he  has 
learned  that  most  verbs  are  conjugated  like  aimer. 

Gradually,  however,  the  child  becomes  capable  of  real 
reasoning,  that  which  implies  attention,  mental  effort,  and 
the  conscious  concatenation  of  judgment  and  ideas  ;  and  this 
process  of  reasoning  appears  rather  early  in  children  well 
endowed. 

186.  EDUCATION  OF  THE  REASON.  —  For  the  reason,  as 
for  the  judgment,  there  is  not,  properly  speaking,  any 
special  training ;  but  in  whatever  he  teaches  the  child,  — 
grammar,  history,  the  sciences,  etc., — the  teacher  may 
habituate  the  child  to  reason,  and  ought  to  do  so. 

"  There  is  no  subject  of  study  which  may  not  in  the  hands 
of  an  intelligent  and  efficient  teacher  be  made  helpful  to  this 
result.  Thus  the  study  of  physical  geography  should  be  made 
the  occasion  for  exercising  the  child  in  reasoning  as  to  the 
causes  of  natural  phenomena.  History,  again,  when  well  taught 
may  be  made  to  bring  out  the  learner's  powers  of  tracing  an^ 
alogies,  finding  reasons  for  events  (e.  g.,  motives  for  actions), 
and  balancing  considerations  so  as  to  decide  what  is  probable, 
wise,  or  just  in  given  circumstances."  * 

However,  the  teaching  of  the  sciences  remains  the  grand 
instrument  for  the  education  of  the  reason.  In  fact,  the 
sciences  are  but  aggregates  of  general  knowledges,  rigor- 
ously based  on  exact  deductions  and  orderly  inductions, 
presented  in  a  methodical  and  logical  order,  and  expressed 
with  precision.  There  could  not  be  a  better  school  for  the 
faculties  of  reflection.  In  studying  the  physical  sciences  the 
student  accustoms  himself  to  generalize  and  to  make  in- 
ductions with  caution,  and  in  striving  to  comprehend  the 

1  Sully,  op.  cit.,  p.  445. 


180  THEOKETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

demonstrations   of   the   mathematical   sciences  he  learns  to 
make  rigorous   deductions. 

187.  PARTICULAR  TENDENCY  TOWARDS  INDUCTION. — The 
child  is  more  inclined  to  induction  than  to  deduction ;  just 
as,  when  he   alters   the   meaning   of  words,  he  generalizes 
them  in  their  signification,  rather  than  specializes  them.     It 
is  easy  to  understand,  in  fact,    that  the  mind  at  the   first 
prefers  to  rise  from  the  particular  to  the  general,  rather  than 
to  descend  from  the  general  to  the  particular.    The  thoughts 
of  the  child  are  almost  all  individual ;  he  has  at  his  command 
only  a  small  stock  of  general   knowledge.     Now  all  deduc- 
tion supposes  general    principles,    universal   truths.     From 
this  fact  there  follows  this  pedagogical  conclusion,  that  the 
inductive  sciences  are  best    adapted  to   the    first  years  of 
instruction.     Educators  are  in  error  who,  like  Diderot,  would 
begin  with    mathematics. 

188.  MODERATION     RECOMMENDED. — "Reasoning    with 
children,"  says  Rousseau,   "  was  the  great  maxim  of  Locke, 
and  it  is  the  one  chiefly  in  vogue  to-day For   my- 
self, I  see  nothing  more  silly  than  those  children  with  whom 
one  has  reasoned  so  much."     Rousseau  would  have  a  child 
remain   a   child. 

No  doubt  we  should  distrust  precocious  reasoners ;  but 
this  should  not  make  us  fall  into  the  opposite  error,  which 
Rousseau  was  wrong  in  recommending,  through  his  desire  to 
retard  beyond  measure  the  development  of  the  reasoning 
faculties.  Locke  was  wiser  when  he  wrote : 

"  I  think  I  may  say  there  is  not  so  much  pleasure  to  have 
a  Child  prattle  agreeably  as  to  reason  well.  Encourage,  there- 
fore, his  inquisitiveness  all  you  can,  by  satisfying  his  demands 
and  informing  his  judgment,  as  far  as  it  is  capable.  When 
his  reasons  are  anyway  tolerable,  let  him  find  the  credit  and 
commendation  of  it.  And  when  they  are  quite  out  of  the  way, 


THE  FACULTIES  OF  REFLECTION.         181 

let  him,  without  being  laughed  at  for  his  mistake,  be  gently 
put  into  the  right ;  and  if  he  shows  a  forwardness  to  be 
reasoning  about  things  that  come  his  way,  take  care,  as  much 
as  possible,  that  nobody  check  this  inclination  in  him,  or  mislead 
it  by  captious  or  fallacious  ways  of  talking  with  him.  For 
when  all  is  done,  this,  as  the  highest  and  most  important 
faculty  of  our  minds,  deserves  the  greatest  care  and  attention 
in  cultivating  it,  the  right  improvement  and  exercise  of  our 
reason  being  the  highest  perfection  that  a  man  can  attain  to 
in  this  life."  1 

189.  SPECIAL  EXERCISES  IN  REASONING  :  DEDUCTION  AND 
THE  SYLLOGISM.  — Though  the  training  of  the  reason  is  for 
the  most  part  the  natural  result  of  the  studies  pursued  and 
of  the  manner  in  which  they  are  taught,  it  is  not  without  use 
to  propose  to  the  child  some  special  exercises  in  reasoning. 

In  ordinary  discourse  the  reasonings  are  rarely  expressed 
under  the  perfect  form  of  a  syllogistic  argument.  Conse- 
quently it  is  very  useful  to  drill  pupils  in  discovering,  in 
carefully  chosen  examples,  the  different  elements  of  the 
syllogism,  as  the  conclusion,  when  only  the  premises  are 
stated,  or  that  one  of  the  premises  which,  in  the  rapidity 
of  the  argument,  has  been  left  understood.  By  this  means 
the  pupil  will  acquire  the  habit  of  disentangling  the  error 
in  the  reasonings,  often  uncertain  and  ambiguous,  of  which 
the  discourses  of  men  are  composed.  Without  needing  to 
resort  to  the  learned  rules  for  deduction,  but  simply  from 
having  reconstructed  the  syllogism  in  its  three  propositions, 
an  attentive  mind  will  easily  discover  whatever  of  the  false 
or  the  equivocal  has  slipped  into  the  reasoning. 

First,  here  are  examples  of  arguments  in  which  .the  pupil 
will  have  to  supply  one  of  the  fundamental  propositions 
which  are  necessary  to  assure  their  validity. 

1  Locke,  op.  tit.,  §  122. 


182  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

190.  To  FIND  THE  PREMISE  WHICH  is  LACKING   IN  THE 
FOLLOWING  REASONINGS  :  —  There  is  anger  that  is  not  blame- 
worthy.    What  other  premise  do  you    need  to  infer  that 
certain  passions   are   not   blameworthy? 

Suppose  a  man  says,  "  I  detest  foreigners."  Find  an- 
other premise,  which  joined  with  this  assertion  authorizes 
the  conclusion,  "  No  foreigner  deserves  to  be  loved." 

Solon  ought  to  be  considered  a  wise  legislator,  because  he 
adapted  his  laws  to  the  character  of  the  Athenians. 

A  slave  is  a  man :  he  ought  not,  then,  to  be  a  slave. 

Rousseau  was  a  man  too  ardent  not  to  commit  many 
errors. 

The  eruptions  of  volcanoes  and  earthquakes  cannot  be 
considered  as  warnings  sent  by  God  to  the  wicked,  since 
these  scourges  overtake  both  the  innocent  and  the  guilty. 

191.  To    FIND    THE     CONCLUSION     INVOLVED    IN     THE 
FOLLOWING    ASSERTIONS:  —  I   know   that  A,  B,  and  C  are 
blockheads,  and  at  the  same  time  educated  men :    have  I 
the  right  to  draw  any   conclusion   from  this? 

No  science  can  be  absolutely  perfect,  and  yet  all  the 
sciences  deserve  to  be  cultivated. 

Prejudices  indicate  a  weak  mind,  and  we  sometimes  meet 
with  prejudices  in  men  who  are  very  well  educated. 

• 

192.  To  REDUCE  THE    FOLLOWING    ARGUMENTS  TO  THE 

SYLLOGISTIC  FORM  :  —  Poetry  is  not  a  science.  The  essen- 
tial characteristics  of  a  science  are  truth  and  generality ; 
and  poetry  has  neither. 

No  war  is  for  a  long  time  popular,  because  war  always 
brings  an  increase  of  taxes,  and  whatever  is  prejudicial  to 
our  interests  enjoys  but  a  passing  popularity. 

Of  two  evils  we  must  choose  the  least :  so  a  temporary 
revolution  being  a  smaller  evil  than  a  permanent  despotism, 
should  be  preferred  to  it. 


THE   FACULTIES    OF   REFLECTION.  183 

In  the  examples  which  we  have  just  proposed,  the  effort 
of  the  pupil  should  be  directed  to  three  points  :  1 .  To  set 
forth  the  conclusion  with  clearness,  —  that  is,  the  thing  to 
be  proved,  in  such  a  way  as  to  distinguish  in  a  proposition 
the  major  term  from  the  minor  term;  2.  To  discover  the 
middle  term  of  the  argument,  of  which  there  should  be  only 
one  in  every  conclusive  syllogism ;  3.  To  determine  with 
exactness  the  two  premises,  one  of  which  connects  the 
major  term  with  the  middle  term,  and  the  other  the  minor 
term  with  the  middle  term. 

The  syllogism  once  reconstructed,  natural  good  sense 
usually  suffices  to  determine  the  value  and  legitimacy  of  the 
argument.  If  there  remains  any  doubt,  it  would  become 
necessary  to  apply  the  rules  of  logic  to  the  suspected 
syllogism ;  and  if  it  violates  none  of  these  rules,  it  is 
legitimate  and  conclusive. 

193.  INDUCTIVE  REASONING. — In  order  to  make  pupils 
clearly  understand  the  mechanism  of  inductive  reasoning, 
their  attention  must  be  called  to  the  three  essential  points 
in  every  induction:  1.  The  conclusion,  which  ought  to  be  a 
proposition,  an  affirmation  proving  that  two  facts  agree  or 
do  not  agree ;  2.  The  character  of  generality  in  this  prop- 
osition, which  should  be  applicable  to  all  the  cases  of  a 
given  order ;  3.  The  method  employed  in  order  to  arrive  at 
this  general  proposition,  a  method  which  is  an  appeal  to 
observation  and  to  facts. 

An  exact  idea  of  the  general  propositions  which  are  the 
result  of  every  legitimate  induction  will  be  gained  by  taking 
examples  in  the  different  sciences. 

The  magnet  attracts  iron  (physics). 

Bodies  fall  in  a  vacuum  (physics). 

Bodies  expand  under  the  influence  of  heat  (physics) . 

The  simplest  substances  are  those  which  manifest  the 
strongest  affinities  (chemistry). 


184  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

Compounds  are  more  fusible  than  elements  (chemistry), 

The  temperature  of  boiling  water  destroys  animal  life 
(physiology) . 

The  red  corpuscles  of  the  blood  are  charged  with 
carrying  oxygen  to  the  tissues  (physiology). 

Feeling  is  always  united  to  the  will  and  to  the  intelli- 
gence (psychology). 

Fear  enfeebles  the  faculties  (psychology) . 

The  more  vivid  the  consciousness,  the  more  tenacious 
the  memory  (psychology). 

The  development  of  the  brain  corresponds  to  the  de- 
velopment of  the  muscles,  and  in  general  of  all  the  organs 
(zoology). 


CHAPTEE    IX. 

CULTURE    OF    THE    FEELINGS. 

194.  MORAL     EDUCATION.  —  Intellectual    education     is 
surely  the  best  of  preparations  for  moral  education.    What- 
ever  is  done   for   developing  the    intelligence   is  far  from 
being  lost,   so  far  as  the  culture  of  the  sentiments,  of  the 
moral    consciousness,  and  of  the  will  is  concerned.     In  a 
well-organized  intelligence,  all  whose  faculties  have  received 
the  education  appropriate    to  their    destination,  the  moral 
qualities  of  the  character   germinate    spontaneously.      The 
man   merely  instructed   is   sometimes  a  bad   man;  but  we 
doubt    whether    the    same    thing   is    true    of  a  man    well 
educated  intellectually.     A  tempered  imagination,  a  power- 
ful attention,   and  a  sound  judgment,   are  reliable  barriers 
which  vouch  for    the  ardor   of  the    passions    and   prevent 
the   errors   of  conduct. 

It  is  none  the  less  true  that  intellectual  education  is  not 
sufficient,  but  that  the  other  faculties  also  demand  a  special 
culture.  The  man  of  feeling  has  no  less  value  than  the 
man  of  intellect.  We  are  not  destined  merely  to  know  and 
comprehend,  but  are  also  made  to  feel  and  love.  Moral 
education  is,  then,  to  be  distinguished  from  intellectual 
education,  and  its  first  purpose  ought  to  be  the  culture 
of  the  feelings. 

195.  COMPLEX  NATURE  OF  THE  FEELINGS. — Nothing  so 
various,    nothing   so    complex,  as  the    psychological  facts 

186 


186  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

which  philosophers  connect  with  the  feelings.  It  is  spe- 
cially here,  in  the  presence  of  these  phenomena  so  diverse, 
which  are  the  elements  of  all  the  virtues  and  all  the  vices 
of  humanity,  —  in  the  presence  of  the  manifestations  of 
what  is  humblest,  grossest,  and  also  most  elevated  and 
ideal  in  the  human  soul,  —  it  is  here  that  it  is  meet  to 
summon  before  us,  in  order  to  reconcile  them,  the  extreme 
opinions  of  those  who  say  with  Rousseau  that  everything 
is  good  in  man,  and  with  Hegel  that  everything  is  bad. 

The  feelings  are  the  common  source  whence  the  most 
degrading  passions  and  the  most  elevated  sentiments  borrow 
their  aliment.  It  is  to  them  that  are  beholden  at  the 
same  time,  the  sensualist  who  forgets  himself  in  bodily 
pleasures,  the  selfish  man  who  is  absorbed  in  the  pursuit 
of  personal  good,  the  bad  man  who  sacrifices  everything 
to  his  vindictive  spirit,  the  man  devoted  and  good,  who  has 
no  pleasure  but  in  making  others  happy,  the  friend,  the 
patriot,  the  philanthropist,  who  deny  themselves  in  order 
to  serve  the  objects  of  their  pious  affection. 

From  this  very  diversity  of  the  phenomena  of  the  feel- 
ings, it  follows  that  the  function  of  education  is  twofold. 
On  the  one  hand  it  must  temper  or  even  repress  dangerous 
inclinations  and  bad  passions,  and  on  the  other  stimulate 
and  develop  the  beautiful  and  noble  elements  in  our 
emotional  nature. 

196.  DIVISION  OF  THE  INCLINATIONS.  —  The  most  of 
psychologists  agree  in  distributing  the  inclinations  or 
emotions  into  three  classes : 

1.  The    personal  or  individual    inclinations,  which  have 
for  their  object  the  me  and  whatever  is  directly  connected 
with  it :  such  are  the  pleasures  of  self-love  and  of  ambition. 
They   are   all   included  under   one   term. — selfishness. 

2.  The    sympathetic    or    benevolent   inclinations    which 


CULTURE   OP   THE   FEELINGS.  187 

attach  us  to  others,  and  for  which  the  positivist  school 
has  invented  the  barbarous  term  altruism:  such  are  the 
affections  in  general,  as  patriotism  and  love  of  humanity. 

3.  The  higher  inclinations,  whose  object  is  abstract 
ideas,  as  the  love  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good. 

Among  these  different  manifestations  of  the  feelings, 
the  last  form  a  class  wholly  distinct,  —  they  pertain  to 
what  is  highest  in  human  nature,  to  ethics,  to  science,  to 
art.  We  shall  study  them  by  themselves.  At  present  we 
shall  examine  in  their  natural  development  and  pedagogical 
treatment  only  the  selfish  and  the  benevolent  inclinations. 
And  at  the  first  we  shall  throw  into  strong  relief  the 
inclinations  which  properly  constitute  the  benevolent 
feelings, — love  for  others,  in  one  word,  the  heart,  through 
which,  as  the  Pere  Girard  has  said,  "  man  is  all  that 
he  is." 

197.  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  HEART  TOO  OFTEN  NEG- 
LECTED. —  For  a  long  time  the  psychologists  have  given 
the  feelings  their  proper  rank  in  the  list  of  the  human 
faculties ;  but  it  seems  that  they  have  found  it  difficult 
to  make  themselves  understood  by  teachers.  In  fact, 
open  most  of  the  works  on  pedagogy,  and  you  will  find 
that  the  chapter  on  the  heart  is  generally  omitted.  And 
on  this  point  the  practice  conforms  only  too  closely  to  the 
theory.  How  many  schools  there  are  in  which  no  effort 
is  made  to  cultivate  the  emotions,  the  sympathetic  senti- 
ments, —  all  which  makes  men  good,  sociable,  loving, 
and  devoted ! 

Even  more,  it  has  occurred  to  certain  writers  to  mention 
this  omission  as  a  merit  in  educators  who  should  deem 
such  a  compliment  a  reproach.  This  quotation  from  M. 
Guizot  is  an  example : 

"  The   almost  absolute    silence   which   Montaigne   has   main- 


188  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

tained  on  that  part  of  education  which  pertains  to  forming  the 
heart  of  the  pupil,  seems  to  me  a  new  proof  of  his  good 
judgment." 1 

198.  NECESSITY     OF     THIS    EDUCATION.  —  "We     cannot 
assent   to  such  an  assertion ;  and  it  seems  to  us  that  the 
heart    has   as   good   a   right    as   the    mind    to    a    special 
training. 

And  first,  do  we  need  to  prove  that  the  heart  is  worth 
at  least  as  much  as  the  mind,  and  that  the  feelings  deserve 
the  care  of  the  educator?  Is  it  not  evident  that  duty 
itself  ought  the  most  often  to  be  placed  under  the  keep- 
ing of  emotion?  There  is  no  virtue  really  secure,  save 
that  which  is  founded  on  the  love  of  virtue.  "He  alone 
is  virtuous,"  said  Aristotle,  "who  finds  pleasure  in  being 
so."  No  doubt  we  should  distrust  men  who,  like  Rous- 
seau, look  only  in  their  hearts  for  the  principles  of  their 
conduct.  The  heart  should  be  governed  by  reason,  and 
an  ardent  sensibility  may  be  allied  with  the  strangest 
freaks  of  judgment  and  conduct.  But  let  us  also  distrust 
characters  that  are  unfeeling,  too  rational,  which  are 
moved  only  by  cold  reflection.  They  will  make  more 
mistakes  than  we  think,  unless  sentiment  comes  to  their 
relief. 

Moreover,  there  are  several  of  our  affections  which  form 
an  integral  part  of  our  duties.  To  love  one's  family, 
one's  friends,  one's  country,  is  not  only  the  source  of 
the  most  delicate  pleasures  and  the  sweetest  joys  of  life, 
but  is  also  the  first  duty  of  a  virtuous  man. 

199.  PARTICULAR    DIFFICULTIES  IN    THE   EDUCATION    OF 
THE  SENTIMENTS.  —  One  of  the  reasons  why  educators  are 
generally  silent  upon  the  nature  of  the  heart,  is  probably 
the  particular  difficulty  of  this  part  of  education. 

1  Meditations  et  Etudes  morales,  p.  404. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   FEELINGS.  189 

We  cannot  give  lessons  in  sensibility  as  we  give  lessons 
in  reading  or  arithmetic.  "  Affection,"  says  Miss  Edge- 
worth,  u  is  not  learned  by  heart."  The  teacher  holds  in 
his  hands  the  means  of  exciting  the  intellectual  powers 
of  the  child ;  he  places  objects  before  his  eyes,  com- 
municates knowledge  to  him  through  language,  and  in 
a  manner  acts  directly  upon  the  faculties  of  the  soul ; 
but  he  has  not  the  same  power  over  the  sentiments.  We 
cannot  command  a  child  to  be  moved,  as  we  require 
him  to  be  attentive. 

Besides,  the  great  diversity  which  nature  puts  into 
human  feelings  complicates  the  problem  still  more.  The 
heart,  much  more  than  the  mind,  is  a  natural  endowment. 
Common  opinion,  and  it  is  not  wholly  false,  declares  that 
we  are  born  tender  or  unfeeling,  affectionate  or  cold. 
Education  seems  powerless  to  warm  up  certain  souls,  to 
endow  them  with  the  life  of  the  affections. 

Notwithstanding  these  difficulties,  there  is  an  art  of 
cultivating  the  feelings ;  and  this  art  consists  chiefly  in 
placing  the  soul  of  the  child  in  circumstances  that  are 
the  most  favorable  for  the  complete  development  of 
his  natural  disposition. 

200.  DEVELOPMENT  OP  SYMPATHY  IN  THE  CHILD.  — 
Originally,  the  child  is  but  a  bundle  of  selfishness ;  and 
it  is  from  this  selfishness  that  there  is  gradually  disen- 
gaged sympathy,  the  faculty  of  loving. 

Very  early  the  child  evinces  sympathy  or  antipathy, 
not  only  in  respect  of  persons  and  animals,  but  also  of 
inanimate  things. 

His  toys,  his  wooden  horses,  his  rubber  cats,  inspire 
him  with  the  tenderest  affection ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  sincerely  hates  whatever  hurts  him  or  wearies  him. 
"The  switch  and  the  wash-rag,"  says  M.  Perez,  "  are 
to  him  personal  enemios." 


190  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

It  is  easy  to  prove  that  the  earliest  sympathies  of 
the  child  are  bestowed  only  on  the  persons  who  have 
given  him  a  personal  pleasure.  A  babe  of  six  months 
will  as  yet  bestow  a  smile  only  on  its  nurse  and  its 
attendant,  —  on  its  nurse,  because  she  recalls  to  it  the 
pleasing  impressions  of  nourishment ;  and  on  its  attend- 
ant, because  she  soothes  and  caresses  it. 

Habit  and  familiarity  also  play  an  important  part  in 
the  development  of  the  nascent  affections,  in  the  edu- 
cation of  a  sensibility  that  takes  fright  at  whatever  is 
new  and  unknown. 

Later,  when  to  the  pleasures  of  taste  and  touch  there 
are  added  those  of  sight  and  hearing,  the  sympathy 
provoked  by  these  new  sensations,  agreeable  or  disagree- 
able, is  extended  to  sonorous  or  colored  objects,  to 
animals,  for  example,  which,  by  the  grace  of  their  move- 
ments or  the  vivacity  of  their  cries,  give  to  the  sight  or 
the  hearing  of  the  child  the  occasion  of  agreeable  ex- 
citement. 

In  a  word,  sympathy  follows  step  by  step  the  suc- 
cessive manifestations  of  the  pleasures  of  sense. 

201.  GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  INFANT  SENSI- 
BILITY. —  The  sensibility  of  the  child  has  the  same  limits 
as  his  intelligence.  The  child  bestows  his  thought  only 
on  actual  things ;  his  memory  goes  back  hardly  beyond 
the  moment  that  has  just  passed ;  he  cannot  extend  his 
inductions  into  the  future.  And  so  his  pleasures  and  his 
pains  are  restricted,  so  to  speak,  to  the  present  hour. 

Hence  at  once  the  vivacity  and  the  fugitive  brevity  of 
the  child's  emotions.  His  sensuous  life  is  made  up  of 
momentary  passions,  sudden  tears  and  smiles,  violent 
pains,  unexpected  caresses,  —  in  a  word,  of  emotions  that 
are  as  ardent  as  they  are  transient.  We  can  see,  in  fact, 


CULTURE   OF  THE  FEELINGS.  191 

that,  being  determined  solely  by  the  presence  of  objects, 
the  feelings  of  the  child  are  quickly  excited,  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  they  extend  no  deep  roots,  they  remain  on 
the  surface,  and  are  not  fixed  in  the  soul.  The  child  is  in 
ecstasies  over  a  trifle ;  with  the  spring  of  his  young  and 
supple  powers  he  gives  himself  up  to  his  joys  and  his 
sorrows.  He  bursts  out  in  laughter,  or  he  sheds  floods 
of  tears.  He  stamps  with  impatience  and  anger.  But 
all  this  fire  is  quenched  as  soon  as  lighted.  The  moment 
the  object  is  withdrawn  or  disappears,  there  is  hardly  a 
trace  of  the  feeling  left  in  him.  As  yet  there  is  not 
enough  power  of  thought  in  the  mind  of  the  child  to  re- 
tain and  perpetuate  the  emotion.  "As  soon  as  new 
objects  and  new  impressions  present  themselves  to  him," 
says  Mr.  Sully,  "  the  current  of  passion  subsides." 

202.  ABUSE  OF  THE  FEELINGS  IN  EDUCATION.  —  There 
are  educators  whose  favorite  maxim  is.  "  Always  reason 
with  children ; "  but  there  are  others  who  are  not  less 
deceived  when  they  say,  "Always  appeal  to  their 
feelings." 

Education  does  not  admit  of  any  exclusive  mobile,1  and 
the  emotions  less  than  any  other. 

1  The  distinction  between  motives  and  mobiles,  first  made  by 
Jouffroy,  is  worth  preserving.  The  state  of  mind  that  precedes  an 
act  always  contains  two  elements,  an  intellectual  and  an  emotional; 
and  usually  these  elements  are  inversely  proportional.  Now  when 
the  stimulus  to  action  is  mainly  intellectual,  it  is  called  by  Jouffroy 
a  motive ;  but  when  it  is  mainly  emotional,  he  calls  it  a  mobile. 
In  the  conduct  of  men  of  the  highest  type,  motives  predominate ; 
but  brutes  are  governed  wholly,  and  savages  mainly,  by  mobiles. 

"  Motives  are  the  intellectual  reasons  which  cause  us  to  act  in 
such  or  such  a  manner,  such  as  thoughts  and  considerations  of 
the  mind.  Mobiles,  on  the  contrary,  are  the  movements  of  the 
heart,  the  affections,  the  passions.  For  example,  maternal  love  is 
a  mobile,  but  the  calculations  of  interest  and  the  considerations  of 
dignity  are  motives."  —  MARION,  Lemons  <le  Psychologic,  p.  127.  (P.) 


192  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

Were  sensibility  perfectly  developed  in  the  child,  there 
would  be  danger  in  confiding  in  it  exclusively.  But  the 
child's  sensibility  is  small  and  limited,  and  when  we  count 
on  its  inspiration  to  govern  his  conduct,  we  often  place 
our  reliance  upon  a  nothing. 

203.  FALSE  APPEARANCES  OF  INFANT  SENSIBILITY.  —  In 
reality,  the  child  is  less  sensitive  than  he  seems.  Deceived 
by  appearances,  we  often  attribute  to  him  emotions  which 
he  does  not  feel. 

"  The  actions  of  children  continually  deceive  us  by  their  ex- 
terior resemblance  to  ours,  and  we  as  often  go  astray  in  trying 
to  find  in  them,  in  order  to  govern  them,  mobiles  similar  to  those 
of  wiiich  we  ourselves  are  conscious.  Louise,  in  some  passing 
transport,  leaves  her  play,  throws  her  arms  about  my  'neck,  and 
cannot  leave  off  embracing  me ;  it  seems  that  all  my  mother's 
heart  could  not  suffice  to  respond  to  the  warmth  of  her  caresses ; 
but  she  leaves  me,  and  with  the  same  playful  movement  goes 
to  kiss  her  doll  or  the  arm  of  the  chair  that  she  meets  on  her 
way." 1 

There  is  an  evident  disproportion  between  the  exterior 
manifestations  of  the  child,  his  gestures,  his  motions, 
which  attest  the  superabundance  of  life  in  his  young 
body,  and  the  real  measure  of  the  emotions  which  he 
experiences.  Because  the  child  is  prone  to  cry,  do  not 
let  us  proceed,  on  false  appearances,  to  ascribe  to  him  a 
strength  of  emotion  similar  to  our  own.  It  is  ridiculous 
to  correct  a  child  by  saying  to  him,  as  Rousseau  would 
after  a  fault  has  been  committed,  "My  child,  you  have 
done  me  a  wrong ! "  Either  the  child  will  not  compre- 
hend you,  and  your  admonition  will  leave  him  indifferent, 
or  he  will  appear  affected,  but  will  be  so  only  upon  the 

1  Madame  Guizot,  Lettres  defamille  sur  V education,  I.,  p.  6. 


CULTURE  OF  THE  FEELINGS.  193 

surface ;  and  in  trying  to  excite  a  premature  emotion 
you  will  have  obtained  only  an  affectation,  a  pretence 
of  affection. 

"When  the  Duchess  of  Orleans  was  ill,"  says  Miss  Edge- 
worth,  "  the  children  were  instructed  to  write  '  charming  notes ' 
from  day  to  day,  from  hour  to  hour,  to  inquire  how  she  did. 
Once,  when  a  servant  was  going  from  Saint  Leu  to  Paris,  Ma- 
dame de  Silleri  asked  her  pupils  if  they  had  any  commissions. 
The  little  Due  de  Chartres  said,  '  Yes ' ;  and  he  gave  a  mes- 
sage about  a  bird-cage,  but  he  did  not  recollect  to  write  to 
his  mother,  till  somebody  whispered  to  him  that  he  had  for- 
gotten it."  l 

Then  let  us  take  children  for  what  they  are,  selfish 
little  creatures,  in  whom  the  affectionate  emotions  grow 
but  slowly,  and  without  ever  effacing  the  inclinations 
of  personal  interest. 

204.  GENERAL  RULES  FOR  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE 
FEELINGS.  —  The  attentive  study  of  the  slow  and  con- 
tinuous progress  of  the  feelings,  rising  little  by  little 
from  the  grossest  pleasures  of  the  senses  to  the  moat 
delicate  emotions  of  the  heart,  is  the  best  refutation  that 
can  be  made  of  the  error  of  educators  who,  like  Rous- 
seau, would  wait  till  the  fifteenth  year  for  developing 
the  moral  sentiments.  We  cannot  too  early  cultivate  the 
sensibility  of  the  child  and  call  into  exercise,  in  chil- 
dren's friendships,  in  the  affections  of  the  family,  a 
sensibility  destined  later  to  become  enamored  of  still 
greater  objects.  On  this  point  it  is  necessary  to  conform 
to  nature,  to  instinct,  and  from  an  early  age  to  give  free 
course  to  the  first  emotions,  to  the  first  aspirations  of 
the  heart.  The  education  of  the  feelings  will  at  first  be 

1  Miss  Edgeworth,  op.  cit.,  I.,  p.  3(58. 


194  THEOKETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

negative ;  it  will  be  content  with  avoiding  whatever 
might  wound  or  repress  the  nascent  feelings.  But  little 
by  little  it  will  become  positive;  that  is  to  say,  it  will 
seek  every  occasion  to  excite,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
regulate,  the  sentiments,  and  to  associate  the  child's 
pleasures  with  things  that  are  good  and  beautiful. 

205.  RELATIONS  OF  EMOTION  TO  IDEA. — The  simplest 
psychological  analysis  suffices  to  prove  that  the  emotions 
have  direct  relations  with  ideas.  The  feelings  are 
exercised  only  upon  the  objects  made  known  by  the  in- 
telligence. It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  the  heart  is 
impoverished  in  proportion  as  the  mind  is  enriched. 
"Would  you  have  a  child  love  his  country?  First  teach 
him  what  his  country  is ;  relate  to  him  the  history  of  his 
ancestors ;  describe  to  him  the  extent  of  his  native  land. 
When  the  idea  has  once  taken  form  in  his  mind,  the 
emotion  will  follow  and  will  spontaneously  attach  itself 
to  the  known  object.  It  is  not  enough,  however,  to 
enlighten  the  intelligence ;  we  must  interest  the  imagi- 
nation. An  English  philosopher  has  remarked  that  cold- 
ness of  heart  is  frequently  caused  by  a  defective  im- 
agination. 

"  The  story  of  the  same  accident,  of  the  same  tragical  event, 
if  told  in  a  heartless  and  uninteresting  manner,  will  leave  us  un- 
moved ;  but  related  in  a  manner  which  speaks  to  our  imagination, 
it  will  move  us  to  the  very  depths  of  the  soul.  This  also  explains 
how  an  accident  which  has  happened  in  a  city  that  we  know,  in 
our  quarter,  in  our  neighborhood,  moves  us  infinitely  more  than 
if  it  had  happened  at  a  distance,  in  a  foreign  city,  or  in  an  un- 
known country."1 

The  development  of  the  feelings  is  thus  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  progress  of  the  intelligence.  We  have  no 

1  M.  Marion,  Lemons  de  Psychologic,  p.  182. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   FEELINGS.  195 

direct  hold  on  the  emotions ;  we  cannot  evoke  them  at 
the  word  of  command ;  but  by  indirect  means,  by  appeal- 
ing to  reflection,  by  presenting  to  the  child,  either  in 
narratives  or  in  real  examples,  situations  adapted  to  move 
him,  we  shall  be  able,  by  enlightening  his  mind,  to  find 
the  road  to  his  heart. 

The  author  of  the  JEcole  maternelle  relates  an  excellent 
lesson  in  filial  affection .  A  little  child  in  a  salle  d'asile 
had  lost  his  mother.  On  coming  back  from  the  cemetery 
he  had  returned  to  school,  where  with  the  thoughtless- 
ness of  his  age  he  talked  and  laughed  with  his  com- 
panions. When  the  time  for  opening  school  had  come, 
the  mistress  spoke  as  follows : 

"  My  children,  we  will  not  sing  to-day,  for  to  sing  we  must  be 
happy  and  content.  Now  we  cannot  be  content  because  here  is 
a  little  child  who  is  not  happy.  He  has  had  the  greatest  misfor- 
tune that  can  befall  a  child ;  he  has  lost  his  mother,  who  loved  him 
so  much.  To-night  when  he  goes  home  he  will  not  find  his  dear 
mother  there  to  kiss  him.  You,  my  children, who  find  your  mother 
at  home,  think  while  kissing  her  how  happy  you  are  in  not  hav- 
ing lost  her.  Love  your  mother ;  and  to  show  that  you  love  her, 
never  cause  her  any  sorrow."  And  the  mistress  added,  "Be 
very  good  to  Charles,  who  no  longer  has  a  mother  to  love  him." l 

206.  COMMUNICATION  OF  FEELING. — If  feeling  cannot 
be  taught  directly,  there  is  a  compensation  in  the  fact 
that  it  can  be  communicated.  Sensibility  is  contagious. 
Surround  the  child  with  affection  and  love,  and  he  will 
respond  to  this  appeal.  His  heart  will  be  moved  if 
he  feels  the  beating  of  other  hearts.  All  the  faculties  of 
the  soul  have  a  tendency  to  radiate,  to  expand ;  but  this 
is  especially  true  of  the  emotions.  If  you  discover  cold- 
ness and  insensibility  in  a  mature  man,  do  not  condemn 

1  Mademoiselle  Chalamet,  L'ficole  maternelle,  p.  87. 


196  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

him  hastily ;  for  the  fault  is  probably  due  to  his  parents, 
his  first  teachers,  or  to  his  surroundings,  rather  than  to 
himself.  Madame  de  Maintenon  was  reason  itself,  but 
her  Solidite,  as  Louis  XIV.  called  her,  was  somewhat 
lacking  in  sensibility  and  benignity.  This  fault  was 
certainly  due  in  part  to  her  education ;  her  mother  had 
kissed  her  but  twice  in  her  whole  life,  and  then  after 
a  long  absence. 

The  best  means  of  making  a  child  affectionate  is  to 
treat  him  with  affection.  Love  is  born  of  love.  The  soul 
opens  and  yields  itself  to  the  affection  which  is  bestowed 
upon  it.  Surrounded  by  persons  of  gentle  passions  and 
benevolent  dispositions,  habituated  to  be  an  object  of 
indulgence  and  affection,  the  child  will  naturally  become 
gentle  and  affectionate.  He  will  learn  to  feel  the  goodness 
whose  effects  he  has  experienced. 

"  Let  the  teacher  love  his  pupils,  and  their  hearts  will  respond 
to  his  own.  Love  is  naturally  communicative ;  it  invites  a  gra- 
cious and  sympathetic  return.  The  child  very  well  knows  when 
lie  is  loved ;  he  sees  it  in  the  glances,  in  the  words  of  his 
teacher,  and  when  he  recognizes  in  his  teacher  a  patience  full 
of  affection,  his  heart  grows  tender  and  inevitably  becomes  at- 
tached to  one  who  consecrates  himself  to  him  with  such  devotion. 
Then  he  runs  to  him  with  joy ;  in  his  teacher  he  has  found  a 
friend  and  a  father.  "  It  is  here  that  I  take  my  stand,"  said  Pes- 
talozzi ;  "  I  would  have  my  children  able  at  each  moment,  from 
morning  till  evening,  to  read  on  my  face  and  to  divine  upon  my 
lips  that  my  heart  is  devoted  to  them ;  that  their  happiness  and 
their  joys  are  my  happiness  and  my  joys."  1 

'  • 

207.     RELATIONS    OF     EMOTION    TO     ACTION. — An    ex- 

1  Gauthey,  De  I'Education,  II.,  p.  8.  It  is  not  useless  to  note,  with 
Madame  Pape-Carpantier,  that  this'  affection  of  the  teacher  for  his 
pupils  ought  to  be  particular,  individual.  "  That  children  may  love, 
love  them.  Love  them,  not  from  the  heights  of  a  lofty  philan- 


CULTURE   OF   THE   FEELINGS.  197 

cellent  means  of  cultivating  the  feelings  is  to  provide 
occasions  and  procure  the  means  for  calling  them  into 
exercise.  The  Abbe  de  Saint  Pierre  required  as  school 
exercises  acts  of  benevolence  and  justice.  At  least  we 
may  require  of  children,  in  their  own  family,  acts  of 
tenderness  towards  their  brothers,  respect  for  their 
parents,  and  at  school,  acts  of  good-will  towards  their 
schoolmates.  By  the  very  fact  that  he  has  been  accus- 
tomed to  practice  a  virtue,  the  child  will  acquire  the  feeling 
which  ordinarily  accompanies  and  inspires  that  virtue. 
By  giving  alms  he  will  learn  to  love  the  poor;  by  doing 
others  a  service  he  will  come  to  love  humanity.  But  on 
one  condition,  however,  —  that  the  acts  suggested  to  the 
child  are  suited  to  his  nature,  that  they  already  accord 
with  his  tastes,  and  that  they  are  not  constrained  and 
forced.  Only  then  will  the  child  find  in  the  act  accom- 
plished a  new  source  of  pleasure,  and  this  pleasure,  once 
tasted,  will  stimulate  him  to  repeat  the  act.  It  is  a  truth 
which  deserves  recognition,  that  we  love  only  because 
we  find  pleasure  in  loving. 

But  care  must  be  taken  not  to  be  satisfied  with  appear- 
ances. In  sentiment,  as  in  religion,  it  is  the  reality  which 
is  important,  not  the  exterior  formalities.  The  rich  child, 
for  example,  gives  money  freely  to  the  poor,  when  he  has 
it ;  but  he  who  lives  in  abundance  does  not  know  the 
value  of  money,  he  feels  no  privation  from  what  he  has 
done.  Then  accustom  the  child  only  to  acts  adapted  to 
his  age,  whose  significance  he  can  comprehend. 

In  this  exercise  of  the  child's  sensibility,  care  should  be 
taken  to  have  him  understand  the  effects  which  his  acts 

thropy,  —  you  will  then  be  too  far  away  from  them;  love  all  the 
children  on  the  globe,  if  your  soul  is  large  enough ;  but  love  above 
everything  else,  and  in  particular,  rarh  one  of  those  who  are 
intrusted  to  your  care.  No  abstract  affection,  but  much  affection  in 
the  concrete. " 


198  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

produce  on  the  feelings  of  others.  Defective  sympathy 
often  comes  from  the  inattention  of  the  child,  who  does 
not  take  into  account  the  feelings  of  others.  He  would 
be  more  affectionate,  more  loving,  if  he  knew  just  how 
much  his  disobedience  and  his  faults  grieved  those  who 
love  him.  Then  make  him  reflect,  either  on  the  pain  he 
caused  his  parents  by  his  bad  conduct  or  on  the  pleasure 
he  has  given  them  by  his  good  conduct.  The  day  the 
child  has  formed  a  just  idea  of  the  consequences  of  his 
conduct  he  will  really  experience  the  delights  of  sympathy 
and  affection ;  he  will  seek  his  pleasure  in  the  pleasure 
of  others ;  he  will  have  passed  the  narrow  circle  of 
selfishness. 

208.  THE  GENERATION  OF  FEELINGS  ONE  BY  ANOTHER. 
—  If  it  is  true  that  feelings  are  communicated  from  one 
heart  to  another,  it  is  not  less  true  that  by  a  sort  of  interior 
generation  a  feeling  once  excited  in  the  soul  gives  birth  to 
other  feelings.  The  different  affections  form  as  it  were  a 
chain.  If  the  child  seizes  one  end  of  it,  he  will  easily  go 
from  one  link  to  another,  and  the  entire  chain  will  pass 
through  his  hands.  At  first  let  us  appeal  to  the  simplest 
feelings,  those  which  are  most  familiar ;  let  us  kindle  some 
flame  in  the  child's  heart ;  we  shall  see  this  flame  gradually 
gaining  ground ;  and  little  by  little  it  will  extend  to  the 
whole  soul. 

"  Children  who  see  their  father  and  mother  love  each  other  will 
also  love  one  another.  In  a  home  where  affection  reigns,  they  are 
bathed  in  it  and  perspire  it  at  every  pore.  Before  they  have 
learned  to  speak,  children  read  affection  in  the  eyes  of  father  and 
mother ;  and  this  affection  children  transmit  to  everything  that 
surrounds  them." l 

1  Ckampfleury,  Les  Enfants,  p.  138. 


CULTURE   OF   THE    FEELINGS.  199 

If  he  has  begun  by  loving  his  family,  be  assured  that  the 
child  will  also  love,  when  the  time  comes,  his  friends,  his 
fellow-citizens,  and  the  whole  human  race. 

The  affectionate  son,  the  kind  companion,  will  also  be  by 
a  sort  of  happy  fatality  an  ardent  citizen,  a  patriot,  a  good 
and  generous  man.  It  is  not  filial  affection,  but  family 
selfishness,  that  sometimes  turns  aside  the  citizen  from 
loving  his  own  country  as  he  ought. 

209.  THE  FEELING  OF  PLEASURE  AND  PAIN. —  Pleasure  is 
the  basis  of  all  sensibility.  It  is  by  the  vivacity  of  the  pleas- 
ure which  the  child  is  capable  of  feeling  that  his  degree  of 
sensibility  will  be  measured.  We  think  we  love  others  for 
their  own  sake ;  but  in  reality  we  love  them  for  the  pleasure 
we  find  in  loving  them.  When  personal,  selfish  interests  are 
concerned,  it  is  still  more  true  that  the  pleasure  we  experi- 
ence is  the  basis  and  the  purpose  of  the  feeling. 

In  one  sense,  it  might  be  asserted  that  the  education  of 
the  feelings  wholly  consists  either  in  developing  or  in  regu- 
lating the  child's  feeling  of  pleasure. 

But  there  is  pleasure  and  pleasure.  By  the  side  of  the 
gross  enjoyments  of  the  senses  there  are  the  pure  emotions 
of  the  heart.  Through  the  development  of- the  intelligence, 
education  will  at  last  succeed  in  making  the  higher  pleas- 
ures more  and  more  predominate  over  the  attractions  of 
material  enjoyment.  To  put  the  book  in  place  of  the  wine- 
cup,  to  replace  sensation  by  idea,  —  such,  according  to  Con- 
dorcet,  is  the  fundamental  problem  of  popular  education  ;  or 
if  not  by  idea,  at  least  by  sentiment.  Between  the  life  of 
sensation  and  the  intellectual  life  there  is  an  intermediary 
more  accessible  to  the  multitude  ;  this  is  the  life  of  the  senti- 
ments, of  the  emotions  of  the  heart,  of  family  and  social 
affections,  of  the  sacred  joys  of  patriotism. 

It  is,  however,  a  question  whether  education   should  have 


200  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

a  tendency  to  increase  the  child's  aptitude  to  feel  pleasure 
and  pain  vividly,  of  whatever  nature  they  may  be. 

According  to  Kant,  the  culture  of  the  feelings  of  pleas- 
ure or  of  pain  should  be  purely  negative.  The  case  of  a  child 
who  takes  pleasure  in  nothing  is  wholly  exceptional.  The 
feeling  of  pleasure  is  too  much  in  conformity  with  nature  to 
make  it  necessary  to  excite  it.  There  should  be  only  precau- 
tions to  be  taken  against  a  tendency  naturally  so  powerful. 

"  There  is  no  need,"  says  the  German  philosopher,  "  to  mollify 
the  feelings.  The  propensity  for  pleasure  is  more  vexatious  to 
men  than  all  the  evils  of  life."  1 

Surely  there  is  nothing  good  to  be  expected  from  soft 
and  effeminate  natures  which  can  act  only  under  the  impulse 
of  pleasure.  We  do  not  believe,  with  Fenelon,  that  every- 
thing is  to  be  done  in  education  with  an  eye  to  pleasure-giving, 
and  that  the  teacher's  ideal  is  to  have  "a  cheerful  face" 
and  to  provide  "cheerful  conversation."  Without  believing 
that  pain  is  inseparable  from  effort,  —  for  there  are  efforts 
that  are  joyous,  in  which  the  display  of  activity  redoubles 
pleasure,  —  we  grant  that  effort  is  sometimes  painful,  afflic- 
tive. Now  effort  is  the  condition  of  progress,  the  instru- 
ment of  education. 

"Let  us  fight  against  soft  impressibleness  in  children;  but  let 
us  not  forget,  on  the  other  hand,  that  insensibility  is  the  worst  of 
all  faults.  What  can  be  expected  of  those  dullish  children  whom 
nothing  moves,  who  can  neither  laugh,  nor  even  smile,  whom 
pleasure  does  not  excite  ?  On  the  contrary,  everything  is  to  be 
expected  of  children  who  are  inclined  to  joyousness,  and  whom 
pleasure  inspires,  but  on  the  condition  that  we  know  how  to 
direct,  little  by  little,  towards  the  good,  towards  the  objects 
worthy  of  being  loved,  this  need  of  enjoyment  and  this  ardor  for 
pleasure." 

1  Kant,  op.  cit.,  p.  226. 


CULTURE   OF   THE   FEELINGS.  201 

210.  EXCITATION  OF  PERSONAL  FEELINGS.  —  "  Sentiment 
will  develop  itself  unaided,"  says  Gauthey,  "  when  it  is  con- 
cerned with  self-love."     In  fact,  it  seems  at  first  sight  that 
the  selfish  feelings  need  only  a  negative,  repressive  discipline 
which  merely  tempers  their  exaggeration ;  and  yet  all  who 
have  had  the  management  of  children  know  that  in  certain 
cases  education  should  assume,  even  with  the  personal  feel- 
ings, its  normal  function,  which  consists  in  spurring,  in  stim- 
ulating.   In  fact,  there  are  natures  so  languid  and  sleepy  that 
education  should  intervene  to  animate  them,  to  excite  them 
to  self-love  and  to  ambition. 

"The  egoistic  impulses,"  says  Mr.  Sully,  "may  even  be  deficient 
and  require  positive  stimulation.  There  are  listless  and  lethargic 
children  whom  it  is  well  to  try  and  arouse  to  self-assertion.  In 
their  case  it  may  be  desirable  to  seek  to  quicken  the  feelings  of 
pride,  ambition,  and  (in  extreme  cases)  even  the  distinctly  anti- 
social feeling  of  antagonism  and  delight  in  beating  others.  .  .  . 
Even  when  there  is  no  natural  deficiency  in  these  feelings,  the 
educator  has  not  so  much  to  repress  them  as  to  direct  them  to 
higher  objects  or  aspects  of  objects.  He  seeks  to  transform  them 
by  refining  them.  Thus  he  aims  at  leading  the  child  up  from  the 
fear  of  physical  evil  to  the  fear  of  moral  evil ;  from  the  enjoy- 
ments of  bodily  conquest  to  that  of  mental  competition  ;  from 
pride  in  the  possession  of  material  objects  to  pride  in  the  posses- 
sion of  intellectual  qualities. "  J 

211.  THE   PASSIONS. — To  tell  the  truth,  the  study  of 
the  passions  is  not  a  pedagogical  subject.     In  fact,  the  pas- 
sions, which   are  exalted,  exclusive  inclinations,  and  which 
have  been  defined  as  "habits  of  the  sensibility,"  imperious 
and  violent  habits,   are  developed  only    in  the  progress  of 
life.     His  young  age  and  his  very  inexperience  shelter  the 
child  from  those  profound  disturbances,  those  diseases  of  the 

1  Sully,  op.  cit.,  p.  606. 


202  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

soul.  It  is  in  ethics,  not  in  pedagogy,  that  we  must  look 
for  the  means  to  cure  them ;  just  as  it  pertains  to  logic  to 
correct  the  sophisms  that  are  rooted  in  conventional  thought. 

However,  if  education  is  not  directly  concerned  with  the 
passions,  since  in  general  they  do  not  exist  at  the  school 
age,  it  ought  to  anticipate  their  appearance.  From  child- 
hood, care  should  be  taken  lest  the  soul  become  a  soil 
already  prepared  for  the  unfolding  of  the  passions  by  a 
preference  accorded  to  certain  emotions  and  by  the  exclu- 
sive development  of  certain  tastes.  The  best  guaranty,  for 
this  purpose,  is  to  develop  the  sensibility  in  all  directions.  It 
is  hardly  to  be  feared  that  passion  will  ever  gain  the  ascen- 
dency over  a  soul  open  to  all  noble  sentiments,  which  has 
learned  to  share  its  faculty  of  loving  among  the  different 
objects  worthy  of  its  love. 

However,  there  are  other  precautions  to  be  taken,  which 
M.  Marion  has  happily  summed  up  in  these  terms  : 

"Vigilance  is  better  than  repression  and  advice.  The  little 
child  must  be  carefully  guarded,  and  everything  done  that  he  may 
grow  up  in  perfect  moral  health.  This  dispenses  with  untimely 
recriminations  and  useless  reproaches.  Sparing  children  the 
occasions  for  falling,  watching  over  their  conduct  without  allow- 
ing them  to  suspect  our  oversight,  keeping  from  their  sight 
bad  books  and  bad  sights,  choosing  the  companions  with  whom 
they  associate,  allowing  them  to  hear  only  decorous  conversation, 
giving  them  only  good  examples,  inspiring  them  as  much  as 
possible  with  a  feeling  of  their  responsibility,  —  in  a  word, 
fashioning  and  directing  their  moral  growth  in  such  a  way  that 
they  will  be  healthy  and  strong  when  the  hour  of  the  passions 
comes,  —  this  is  the  work  of  a  well-conducted  education." 1 

1  M.  Marion,  op.  cit.,  p.  249. 


CHAPTEE  X. 

MORAL     EDUCATION. 

212.  MORAL  EDUCATION  PROPER. — "We    shall   not   fol- 
low the  example  of    those  educators   who,  with  respect  to 
moral  education,  include  in  their  treatises  the  whole  theory 
of  duty,  the  whole  of  ethics,  just  as  they  have  introduced 
the  whole  of  psychology  into  their  treatment  of  intellectual 
education.    Our  subject  is  limited ;  it  is  concerned  simply 
with  the  inquiry  how  nature  of  herself  develops  the  moral 
faculties,  and  how  education  intervenes  in  its  turn  to  train 
them,  to  hasten  their  unfolding,  and  to  perfect  their  develop- 
ment.    It  is  not  the  purpose  here  to  set  forth  the  different 
applications  of  moral  power,  but  we  have  simply  to  inquire 
by  what  means  this  power  is  called  into  being  and   grad- 
ually created. 

213.  THE  MORAL  FACULTIES. — The  moral  faculties  are 
distinguished  from  the  intellectual  faculties  in  that  they  tend 
to  action,  and  not  to  knowledge.     These  are  active,  not  spec- 
ulative faculties.     The  moral  faculties  form  the  character ; 
the  intellectual  faculties  form  the  mind.     The  former  lead 
us  to  virtue ;  the  latter  to  knowledge. 

Moreover,  there  are  to  be  distinguished  in  that  aggregate 
of  moral  faculties  commonly  called  the  conscience  three 
different  series  of  facts  : 

1 .  The  facts  of  the  sensibility,  not  of  that  general  sensibility 
of  which  we  have  already  spoken,  which  is  diffused  in  the 

203 


204  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

affections  of  every  sort,  but  of  that  which  attaches  us  to 
the  good,  which  makes  us  love  duty,  which  affects  us  in 
the  presence  of  what  is  good. 

2.  The  facts  of  the  intelligence,  the  practical  reason,  which 
suggests  to  us  the   ideas  of  good  and   evil,  of    merit    and 
demerit,  —  in  a  word,  moral  ideas. 

3.  The  fact   of   the  will,  the  energy  which  determines  us 
to  the  action  which  we  know  to  be  good,  the  good- will  which 
inclines  us  to  virtue. 

In  other  terms,  we  must  at  the  same  time  love,  know, 
and  will  the  good.  It  is  not  enough  that  our  enlightened 
intelligence  permits  us  to  distinguish  what  is  good  from 
what  is  bad.  Beyond  this,  and  above  all,  it  is  necessary 
that  a  strong  will  give  us  the  means  of  executing  the  decis- 
ions of  our  moral  judgment ;  and  it  is  also  necessary,  in  order 
that  the  moral  effort  may  be  less  painful,  that  feeling  come 
to  our  aid,  that  the  imperious  orders  of  the  reason  become, 
as  often  as  possible,  the  gracious  solicitations  of  the  heart. 

214.  MORAL  EDUCATION  AND  THE  TEACHING  OF  MOR- 
ALS.—  Moral  education  is  one  thing,  and  the  teaching  of 
morals  quite  another.1  A  course  in  morals,  a  body  of  pre- 
cepts, is  certainly  of  great  service  in  training  a  man  to  be 
good.  We  do  not  think  the  ancient  philosophy  was  wholly 
wrong  when  it  affirmed  that  virtue  can  be  taught.  It  can 
not  be  useless  to  call  the  attention  of  the  child,  in  a  didac- 
tic way,  to  the  grand  truths  of  conscience,  to  the  distribu- 
tion of  duties,  the  diverse  obligations  of  life  ;  but  neverthe- 
less the  teaching  of  morals  is  but  a  small  part  of  moral  edu- 
cation. 

This  education  is  really  going  on  at  every  stage  and  mo- 
ment of  life.  It  begins  at  birth,  through  the  examples  which 

1  See  Part  Second  of  this  work. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  205 

parents  transmit  to  their  children ;  it  is  continued  at  school, 
through  the  habits  that  are  formed  there,  through  the  senti- 
ments which  are  there  developed,  and  especially  through  the 
discipline  that  is  in  vogue  there ;  finally,  it  is  prolonged 
during  the  whole  of  life,  through  the  effort  of  the  will  and  of 
personal  education. 

This  education,  moreover,  is  a  complex  work,  in  which 
there  co-operate  even  more  than  in  intellectual  education,  not 
only  the  child's  own  nature,  his  native  dispositions  and 
particular  tastes,  but  the  different  characters  of  all  the 
persons  who  surround  him,  his  parents,  his  friends,  his 
teachers,  and  in  general  the  influences,  perhaps  as  profound, 
though  more  unnoticed,  of  the  social  environment  in  which 
he  lives. 

It  cannot,  then,  be  seriously  proposed  to  confine  moral 
education  to  the  narrow  circle  of  a  school  course,  of  a  series 
of  lessons,  whatever  science  may  be  introduced  into  them. 

"  The  purpose  of  moral  education  is  not  to  add  to  a  pupil's 
knowledge,  but  to  affect  his  will ;  it  moves  more  than  it  demon- 
strates ;  before  acting  on  the  emotional  nature,  it  proceeds  rather 
from  the  heart  than  from  the  reason ;  it  does  not  undertake  to 
analyze  all  the  reasons  of  the  moral  act,  but  tries  above  all  else 
to  produce  it,  to  have  it  repeated,  to  make  of  it  a  habit  which 
shall  govern  the  life.  Especially  in  the  primary  school,  it  is  not 
a  science,  but  an  art,  —  the  art  of  inclining  the  free  will  towards 
the  good. " l 

215.  IMPORTANCE  OF  MOUAL  EDUCATION.  — Is  there  need 
at  this  time  of  insisting  on  the  especial  importance  of  moral 
education  ?  Necessary  at  all  times,  it  is  still  more  so  in  a 
society  like  ours,  where  morality  ought  to  be  developed  in 
proportion  to  the  development  of  liberty  itself. 

"  The  establishment  of  the  republican  regime,"  says  the  author 
1  See  the  Act  establishing  common  schools. 


.206  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

of  a  recent  book,  "  by  reducing  the  part  of  arbitrary  authority 
which  is  made  imperative,  demands  in  return  a  proportional 
increase  of  that  moral  authority  which  is  accepted  in  its  stead. 
"  Being  less  governed  by  an  external  will,  it  is  necessary  that 
men  know  better  how  to  govern  themselves ;  what  they  once  did 
through  force  and  through  fear,  they  must  learn  to  do  by  free 
will  and  through  duty.  " l 

216.  SUPERIORITY  OF  MORAL  GRANDEUR. — We  have  said 
in  another  place  that  instruction  or  intellectual  power  plays 
an  important  part  in  the  development  of  moral  power.  It 
sometimes  happens,  however,  that  morality  does  not  accom- 
pany learning,  nor  even  genius. 

"As  a  moral  man,"  says  Mr.  Blackie,  "the  first  Napoleon  lived 
and  died  very  poor  and  very  small.  ...  It  was  an  easy  thing  for 
Lord  Byron  to  be  a  great  poet ;  it  was  merely  indulging  his 
nature;  he  was  an  eagle,  and  must  fly;  but  to  have  curbed  his 
wilful  humor,  soothed  his  fretful  discontent,  and  learned  to 
behave  like  a  reasonable  being  and  a  gentleman,  —  that  was  a 
difficult  matter,  which  he  does  not  seem  ever  seriously  to  have 
attempted.  His  life,  therefore,  with  all  his  genius  and  fits  of 
occasional  sublimity,  was  on  the  whole  a  terrible  failure."  2 

The  same  might  be  said  of  Rousseau,  capable  on  occasion 
of  heroic  devotion,  but  powerless  to  apply  himself  to  the 
ordinary  duties  of  life ;  a  man  of  incomparable  genius,  but 
scarcely  an  honorable  man. 

Then  let  us  put  morality  in  the  first  rank  of  our  solici- 
tudes, because  it  is  the  first  need  of  society.  "We  may 
even  conceive  a  society  composed  of  honorable  men  without 
instruction ;  but  we  cannot  conceive  a  society  formed  of  edu- 
cated men  without  honor."8 

1  M.  Vessiot,  De  l'Educatj,on  a  I'tcole. 

2  Blackie,  op.  cit.,  p.  57,  58. 
*  M.  Vessiot,  op.  cit.,  p.  13. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  207 

217.  Is  THE  CHILD  GOOD  OR  BAD  ? — The  ideal  is  to 
make  of  the  child  a  moral  being  who  carries  within  himself 
his  own  rule  of  conduct,  who  governs  himself  by  his  own 
will,  and  who  knows  no  other  rule  than  the  law  of  right,  and 
who  has  no  will  except  for  the  good. 

But  before  nature  and  education  have  succeeded  in  com- 
pletely developing  the  germs  of  the  moral  consciousness, 
before  the  child  comes  to  be  virtuous,  many  years  elapse ; 
and  during  this  time  all  we  can  demand  of  the  child  is  to  be 
innocent.  Our  only  thought  is  to  prevent  him  from  doing 
evil,  or  at  most  to  cultivate  the  instinctive  dispositions  which 
urge  him  to  praiseworthy  actions.  We  can  impose  on  him 
only  an  exterior  morality,  so  to  speak,  while  waiting  for  the 
reason  and  the  will  to  become,  in  his  mature  soul,  the  solid 
principles  of  an  interior  morality,  freely  desired  and 
realized. 

Up  to  what  point  does  the  nature  of  the  child  adapt  itself 
to  this  first  education?  Do  we  find  in  him  only  instinctive 
tendencies  towards  the  good  ?  Or,  on  the  contrary,  must  we 
expect  a  stubborn  resistance  on  the  part  of  a  nature  deeply 
corrupt  and  vicious? 

In  other  terms,  is  the  child  good  or  bad  ? 

The  general  direction  of  education  varies  according  to  the 
reply  given  to  this  question.  We  are  either  constrained  to 
look  with  favor  on  a  nature  assumed  to  be  good,  or  our  only 
thought  is  to  repress  a  nature  originally  bad. 

"  Education, "  says  Madame  Guizot,  "  has  long  been  a  system 
of  hostility  against  human  nature.  It  was  merely  a  question  of 
correcting  and  punishing.  It  seemed  that  the  only  question  was 
to  take  from  children  the  nature  which  God  had  given  them,  in 
order  to  give  them  another  fashioned  by  the  teacher."  * 

On  the  other  hand,   especially  since  Rousseau   and   the 
1  Madame  Guizot,  op.  cit.,  Lettre  XIL 


208  THEOKETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

paradoxes  of  the  Emile  upon  the  absolute  innocence  and  the 
perfect  goodness  of  the  child,  education  tends  to  replace 
punishments  by  encouragements,  and  the  "sycophants  of 
infancy,"  according  to  the  expression  of  Madame  Necker  de 
Saussure,  think  only  of  avoiding  everything  that  restricts  and 
constrains,  in  order  to  leave  to  nature  her  full  and  free 
expansion. 

218.  OPPOSING  OPINIONS. — For  our  part,  we  shall  avoid 
the  absolute  opinions  of  both  the  optimists  and  the  pessi- 
mists, who  in  turn  present  to  us  infant  nature  under  colors 
the  most  cheerful  or  the  most  sombre. 

"  Everything  is  good,"  cries  Rousseau,  "  as  it  comes  from  the 
hands  of  the  Author  of  nature.  The  first  movements  of  nature 
are  always  right." 

On  the  other  hand,  "  we  are  born  the  children  of  wrath," 
says  St.  Paul.  "All  are  born  for  damnation,"  proclaims 
sSaint  Augustine.  And  the  Jansenists  zealously  echo  the 
sentiment. 

"You  ought  to  consider  your  children,"  wrote  Varet,  "as  all 
inclined  and  borne  on  toward  evil.  Their  inclinations  are  all 
corrupt ;  and  not  being  governed  by  reason,  they  will  cause  them 
to  find  pleasure  and  enjoyment  only  in  the  things  which  lead 
them  to  vice." 

It  is  between  these  two  extremes,  between  these  two  theses 
equally  false,  of  the  radical  perversity  and  of  the  absolute 
goodness  of  man,  that  we  must  look  for  the  truth. 

219.  THE  CHILD  is  NEITHER  GOOD  NOR  BAD. — Correctly 
speaking,  the  child  has  not  yet  a  moral  character,  and  we 
might   think   the   question   settled   by   this   observation   of 
Kant: 

"It  is  a  question,"  he  says,  "whether  man  is  by  his  nature 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  209 

morally  good  or  bad.  I  reply  that  he  is  neither,  for  naturally  he 
is  not  a  moral  being ;  he  becomes  such  only  when  he  elevates  his 
reason  to  the  ideas  of  duty  and  of  law.  He  could  not  become 
morally  good  save  by  means  of  virtue,  —  that  is  to  say,  a  con- 
straint exercisted  over  himself,  although  he  may  be  innocent  as 
long  as  his  passions  are  slumbering." 

But  Kant  somewhat  mistakes  the  question,  which  is,  not 
whether  the  acts  of  the  child  are  inspired  by  a  moral  inten- 
tion, good  or  bad,  —  which  no  one  would  dare  to  assert,  — 
but  whether,  without  willing  it,  and  by  an  unconscious 
inclination  of  his  nature,  the  child  is  led  to  what  is  good  or 
to  what  is  bad.  The  truth  is  that  he  is  led  to  both,  and  that 
in  his  composite  nature  vicious  dispositions  are  associated 
with  legitimate  and  praiseworthy  instincts. 

We  grant,  however,  that  the  inclinations  of  the  child  are 
not,  for  the  most  part,  evil  in  themselves.  "  What  is  evil  in 
them,"  wrote  Madame  Guizot,  "is  not  the  inclination,  but 
its  inordinate  manifestation."  And  Kant  had  said  to  the 
same  effect:  "The  sole  cause  of  evil  is  that  nature  is  not 
subjected  to  rules." 

220.  THE  ASSUMED  EVIL  INSTINCTS  OF  CHILDHOOD.  —  Let 
us  now  examine  some  of  the  accusations  brought  against  the 
child. 

He  has  been  greatly  traduced.  "The  child,"  said  La 
Bruyere,  "is  haughty,  disdainful,  irascible,  envious,  inquisi- 
tive, selfish,  lazy,  fickle,  etc."  It  is  a  pleasure  to  know  that 
this  litany  of  slanders  emanates  from  a  bachelor.  With- 
out intending  to  flatter  the  child,  we  may  assert  that  his 
faults  come,  some  from  the  bad  education  which  he  receives, 
others  from  his  ignorance,  and  only  a  very  few  from  an 
innate  tendency  to  evil. 

It  is  said,  for  example,  that  the  child  is  cruel.  "  That  age 
is  without  pity,"  said  La  Fontaine,  who  was  less  affectionate 


210  THEOKETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

to  children  than  to  animals.  This  saying  is  true,  but  the 
most  often  this  harshness  is  the  result  of  a  lack  of  intelli- 
gence. Children  are  without  pity,  because  they  do  not  under- 
stand the  evil  which  they  do.  They  torture  a  bird,  because, 
like  little  Cartesians,  they  do  not  know  that  the  bird  suffers. 

Another  instinct  of  the  child,  it  is  said,  is  theft.  The 
child  resembles  the  savage,  who  has  only  a  confused  notion 
of  property.  "He  has  not  exactly  the  instinct  of  theft," 
remarks  M.  Legouve,  "  but  he  has  not  the  instinct  of  other's 
property.  In  his  case,  the  distinction  between  mine  and 
thine  often  consists  in  taking  the  thine  in  order  to  make  of  it 
the  mine.  But  is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  the  child,  who 
has  not  studied  the  code,  who  has  not,  like  Rousseau's  Emile, 
encountered  a  gardener  Robert  to  explain  to  him  the  origin 
of  property,  readily  consents  to  take  for  his  own  use  what 
pleases  him,  but  does  not  belong  to  him? 

In  other  cases  it  is  the  grown  man  who,  by  his  lack  of 
sense  or  by  his  example,  inculcates  on  the  child  his  own 
faults. 

Is  it  childish  vanity  that  we  hear  mentioned  ?  Must  not 
parents  be  blamed  for  this?  This  is  stimulated  by  parents 
who  on  improper  occasions  excite  the  self-esteem  of  their 
children  by  exaggerating  their  merits.  There  is  a  well-known 
story  of  a  little  girl  who,  having  been  praised  by  her  mother 
for  a  childish  repartee,  said  in  the  presence  of  a  lady  visitor, 
''Mamma, you  have  not  told  Madame  what  I  said  this  morn- 
ing!" 

Children  are  charged  with  gluttony  !  I  firmly  believe  that 
Rousseau  was  right  on  this  point,  and  that  it  is  society,  in 
this  case,  which  corrupts  nature.  In  fact,  does  the  greedy 
child  do  more  than  desire  his  share  of  the  dainties  which  load 
the  table  of  his  parents  ?  If  the  example  of  intemperance 
were  not  set  before  him,  he  would  be  more  temperate  than 
we  think. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  211 

So  falsehood  is  too  often  but  the  result  of  our  bad  man- 
agement. "  Now  who  has  broken  this  piece  of  furniture?" 
we  cry  in  a  rage.  Thoroughly  frightened,  the  little  culprit 
replies,  "  /did  not  do  it !  "  The  child  who  is  treated  mildly 
becomes  confiding,  but,  terrified  by  our  severity,  he  seeks  a 
refuge  in  falsehood. 

Moreover,  it  is  not  sufficient,  in  order  to  judge  the  child 
justly,  to  seek  in  his  ignorance  or  in  his  bad  education  the 
explanation  and  the  excuse  for  the  most  of  his  faults.  We 
must  go  further,  and  show  what  good  qualities,  what  senti- 
ments of  justice,  liberality,  pity,  and  goodness  he  sometimes 
exhibits.  But  we  have  said  enough  to  justify  those  who,  in 
judging  the  child,  would  avoid  on  the  one  hand  extravagant 
praise  and  on  the  other  passionate  condemnation. 

221.  THE  EVIL  INSTINCTS  OF  THE  CHILD.  —  Let  us  ac- 
knowledge the  fact,  however,  that  certain  instincts  of  child- 
hood are  real  tendencies  to  evil.  It  is  inaccurate  to  say 
that  there  are  in  nature  germs  only  of  the  good.  Envy  and 
anger  are  natural,  but  they  are  essentially  bad.  Here  the 
evil  is  in  the  inclination,  not  in  the  inordinate  manifestation 
of  the  inclination. 

Madame  Necker  de  Saussure  dwells,  not  without  regret, 
she  says,  upon  the  vices  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  child. 

"I  speak  of  that  momentary  demoralization  of  the  will  which 
finds  a  pleasure,  a  particular  savor,  in  the  idea  of  violating  a 
rule.  .  .  .  We  observe  in  children  something  besides  weakness, 
something  besides  inability  to  submit  to  the  sacrifices  required 
by  duty ;  we  see  delight  in  throwing  off  the  yoke  of  duty." l 

To  the  same  effect  Mr.  Bain  devotes  a  special  article  to 
the  "  anti-social  and  malign  emotions." 

To  those  who  would  deny  the  existence  of  evil  instincts, 

1  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure,  I.,  p.  304. 


212  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

and  would  explain  what  is  evil  by  the  intemperance  of  in- 
clinations good  in  themselves,  it  suffices  to  observe  that  the 
very  intemperance  is  a  principle  of  evil ;  that  this  tendency 
to  run  riot  is  in  nature,  and  consequently  that  human  nature 
is  not  wholly  good. 

222.  REPRESSION  OF  Vicious  TENDENCIES.  —  Moral  edu- 
cation, then,  will  not  be  merely  a  work  of  excitation  and  of 
culture  ;  it  will  also  have  to  oppose  and  to  repress.     At  first, 
the  evil  will  be  opposed  by  favoring  the  good.     There  is  no 
better  way  of  correcting  evil  inclinations  than  by  cultivating 
those  which  are  good ;    nor  of  fighting  indolence  than  by 
exciting   to  labor;  nor  of  preventing  malevolence  than   by 
teaching  to  be  good.     It  is  to  the  same  effect  that  Madame 
Guizot  wrote  : 

"  I  have  always  been  persuaded  that  education  had  no  power 
against  evil,  except  the  taste  for  the  good. 

"  We  do  not  repress  an  evil  inclination,  but  we  fortify  a  good 
one ;  and  I  know  of  no  means  of  extirpating  a  fault  except  to 
make  a  virtue  grow  in  its  place." 1 

"  In  certain  cases,  however,  we  must  resort  to  direct  repression. 
The  method  of  substitution  does  not  always  suffice.  Special 
remedies  are  required  for  definitely  marked  diseases.  It  is  here 
that  discipline  intervenes,  with  its  retinue  of  punishments  and  its 
necessary  means  of  coercion."  2 

Patient  with  trivial  faults  which  would  be  aggravated  by 
calling  the  child's  attention  to  them  and  by  punishing  them 
prematurely,  discipline  will  be  severe  in  the  case  of  grave 
faults.  It  will  prevent  their  return,  and  it  will  chastise  them 
sharply  if  it  cannot  prevent  them,  if  an  obstinate  resistance 
makes  exhortations  and  reprimands  useless. 

223.  THE    CONSCIENCE   OR  PRACTICAL   REASON.  —  There 

1  Madame  Guizot,  op.  cit.,  I.,  p.  105. 

2  See  Part  Second  of  this  work. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  213 

comes  a  moment  in  the  life  of  the  child  when  it  does  not 
suffice  to  correct  his  evil  inclinations  and  to  awaken  his 
beneficent  instincts ;  but  when  we  must  excite  his  moral 
consciousness  and  create  in  him  the  idea  of  a  general  rule 
of  conduct,  the  idea  of  duty. 

Nature  has  planted  the  germ  of  this  idea  in  the  intelli- 
gence, and  it  is  to  the  reason, — that  is,  to  the  highest  of  the 
intellectual  faculties,  —  that  psychology  ascribes  the  origin 
of  moral  conceptions. 

Reason  is  the  faculty  of  intellectual  ideas,  necessary  and 
absolute  ;  it  is  the  natural  light  which  enlightens  every  man 
coming  into  this  world. 

From  the  first  dawn  of  his  intelligence,  the  child  is  already 
under  the  direction  of  the  reason ;  but  this  reason  is  almost 
unconscious.  The  child  would  be  incapable  of  formulating 
the  rational  laws  of  which  his  judgments  are  the  application. 
Thus  a  little  boy  of  seven  or  eight  years  looks  with  his 
father  for  a  lost  object,  and  not  finding  it,  he  cries,  "But 
yet  it  must  certainly  be  that  something  is  always  some- 
where !  " 

Is  not  this  already  to  express,  in  an  artless  way  and  with- 
out succeeding  in  rendering  a  complete  account  of  it,  the 
necessary  existence  of  an  infinite  space  in  which  are  con- 
tained all  material  things?  And  so,  when  a  child  on  whom 
we  have  tried  to  impress  the  idea  of  the  creation  of  the 
world  and  the  idea  of  the  Creator,  replies  obstinately,  "  But 
before  God  what  was  there  ?  "  is  it  not  evident  that  without 
knowing  it  his  young  mind  obeys  the  principle  of  causality, 
which  requires  that  every  existence  should  be  connected  with 
an  antecedent  cause? 

The  examples  which  we  have  just  cited  are  connected  with 
what  Kant  called  the  pure  reason,  that  is,  the  theoretical 
and  speculative  reason,  that  which  guides  us  in  scientific 
research. 


214  THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

But  there  are  other  manifestations  of  the  reason,  —  those 
which  relate  to  practical  life  and  to  moral  conduct.  In  this 
sense  the  reason  is  nothing  but  the  moral  consciousness,  the 
belief  in  an  obligatory  law  which  all  ought  to  obey.  Since 
Kant,  philosophers  usually  give  to  this  the  name  of  practical 
reason.  Let  us  see  if  under  this  form  the  reason  also  mani- 
fests itself  in  the  actions  of  the  child. 

224.  THE  MORAL  SENSE  IN  THE  CHILD. — At  what  mo- 
ment may  it  be  said  that  there  appears  in  the  child  the 
essential  moral  idea,  — that  is,  the  distinction  between  good 
and  evil,  detached  from  every  foreign  element? 

Certain  observers  of  childhood  seem  to  us  to  have  ascribed 
too  much  upon  this  point  to  the  childish  intelligence.  M. 
Perez  believes  that  the  objective  notion  of  good  and  evil  can 
be  verified  at  the  age  of  six  or  seven  months.  Darwin 
declares  that  he  observed  the  moral  sense  in  children  at  the 
age  of  thirteen  months. 

For  ourselves,  we  are  convinced  that  neither  at  thirteen 
months  nor  at  two  years,  nor  even  much  later,  is  the  child  in 
a  condition  actually  to  discriminate  good  from  evil.  In  order 
to  believe  him  capable  of  morality  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word,  it  would  first  be  necessary  to  accept  a  loose  definition 
of  the  moral  consciousness,  —  a  definition  which  invalidates 
and  attenuates  its  import ;  it  would  then  be  necessary  to 
resort  to  an  illusory  interpretation  of  certain  acts  in 
child-life. 

Here  are  the  facts  reported  by  Darwin  1  and  by  Perez.2 
Doddy,  aged  thirteen  months,  seemed  to  notice  the  reproaches 
of  his  father,  who  called  him  a  bad  boy.  At  the  age  of  two 
years  and  five  months,  Doddy,  who  had  been  left  alone, 
helped  himself  to  sugar,  a  thing  which  he  knew  was  for- 

1  See  in  the  Revue  Scientifique  the  account  by  Darwin. 

2  M.  P^rez,  op.  cit. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  215 

bidden.  His  father  met  him  at  the  moment  when  he  came 
from  the  dining-room,  and  noticed  something  strange  in  his 
conduct.  "  I  think,"  adds  Darwin,  "that  this  appearance 
was  to  be  attributed  to  the  struggle  between  the  pleasure 
of  eating  the  sugar  and  the  beginning  of  remorse."  The 
examples  given  by  Perez  are  of  the  same  character.  A  child 
of  eleven  months  obeyed  when  his  father  said,  in  a  loud  voice, 
"  Keep  still !  "  This  child  had  not  yet  walked  alone,  but  hia 
father  caused  him  to  take  a  few  steps  toward  him  by  offering 
him  a  half  of  a  peach. 

It  requires  much  good  will  to  decorate  with  the  epithet 
moral,  actions  in  which  are  manifested  merely  the  desire  to 
gratify  some  sense,  the  fear  of  suffering  associated  by  the 
memory  with  certain  actions,  or  at  most  the  distinction  be- 
tween paternal  caresses  and  threats.  The  association  of  ideas 
and  the  memory,  concurring  in  a  conscious  feeling  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  abundantly  suffices  to  explain  the  relative  obedience 
yielded  by  the  child,  and  we  decline  to  believe  that  a  baby  is 
in  possession  of  the  moral  sense  from  the  moment  he  obeys 
through  habit  or  fear. 

225.  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS. — 
Not  that  it  is  necessary  to  deny  the  importance  of  these  early 
sensible  and  utilitarian  distinctions  in  the  future  acquisition 
of  moral  distinctions.  Nature  proceeds  by  successive  rough 
drafts.  For  the  moral  consciousness,  as  for  the  attention, 
we  must  be  content  at  first  with  appearances,  with  a  fore- 
shadowing of  the  real  state  which  will  be  attained  only  long 
afterwards. 

At  first,  the  good  is  what  pleases  and  the  bad  what  dis- 
pleases the  child.  Let  it  be  so  managed  that  he  shall  be 
pleased  with  only  what  is  good.  Later  on,  the  good  is  what 
father  and  mother  order,  and  the  evil  what  they  forbid. 
Manage  in  such  a  way  that  the  child  loves  or  fears  hi» 


216  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

parents  enough  to  yield  with  docility  to  their  will.  Still 
later,  when  the  intelligence  is  capable  of  reflection,  the  good 
is  what  is  useful,  the  evil  what  is  hurtful.  As  far  as  possi- 
ble make  the  child's  duty  accord  with  his  interest.  Finally, 
at  a  still  higher  stage,  the  good  is  what  men  approve,  what 
the  civil  law  requires ;  the  evil,  what  is  universally  con- 
demned. Make  the  child  sensitive  to  public  opinion. 
Teach  him  to  blush,  and  to  feel  shame  for  every  act  which 
incurs  general  reproach. 

It  is  not  till  the  final  term  of  its  evolution  that  the 
conscience  comes  to  grasp  the  idea  of  a  moral  good  existing 
by  itself,  conformed  to  the  dignity  of  man,  which  must  be 
practiced  for  the  sole  reason  that  it  is  good.  But  before  the 
moral  idea  is  detached  from  every  foreign  element,  —  from  the 
seductions  of  pleasure,  from  the  fear  or  the  love  inspired  by 
parents,  from  the  solicitations  of  interest,  from  the  respect 
inspired  by  public  opinion,  how  many  halting-places  there 
are  to  pass  through  !  What  painful  and  slow  elaboration  to 
attain  the  ideal  of  a  conscience  saluting  a  sovereign  law, 
bowing  before  it  and  voluntarily  conforming  to  its  require- 
ments ! 

226.  THE  FIRST  MANIFESTATIONS  OF  MORALITY. — Moral- 
ity, in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  is  not  the  act  of  a  being 
whose  conduct  is  simply  in  accord  with  the  moral  law ;  but 
it  is  the  characteristic  of  a  person  who  intentionally  and 
because  he  wills  it,  submits  to  that  law,  and  knowingly 
accomplishes  actions  which  he  judges  good. 

Must  we  think  that  the  'child  is  absolutely  a  stranger  to 
morality,  thus  understood?  Some  facts  seem  to  prove  the 
contrary. 

"All  the  niceties  of  the  moral  sentiments,"  says  M.  Egger, 
"are  not  the  product  of  education  and  the  privilege  of  a  more 
advanced  age.  For  example,  the  instinct  of  remorse  and  of 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  217 

reparation  is  usually  exhibited  by  children  after  little  revolts  of 
the  will.  The  child  is  never  in  better  spirits  than  after  these 
storms ;  and  it  is  credible  that  he  shows  the  intention  of  having 
us  forget  the  sorrow  caused  by  his  disobedience."  x 

M.  Perez  cites,  from  the  Italian  philosopher  L.  Ferri,  the 
case  of  a  child  five  years  old,  who,  having  been  praised  by 
his  mother,  said  to  her,  "  Mamma,  I  wish  I  could  make  you 
still  happier ;  I  wish  I  could  always  -be  good  ;  tell  me,  why 
can't  I  always  be  good? " 2 

A  still  more  probable  case  is  that  of  a  child  noticed  also 
by  M.  Perez,  who  thought  he  was  not  sufficiently  punished 
for  a  fault  he  had  committed,  and  by  a  sort  of  spontaneous 
feeling  of  justice  demanded  additional  correction. 

227.  EDUCATION  OF  THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS. — There 
are,  then,  in  nature  herself,  the  germs  of  morality.  It 
would  be  impossible,  in  fact,  to  suggest  the  idea  of  the  good, 
if  the  reason  did  not  contain  the  principle  of  it. 

"The  child  carries  within  himself  the  moral  law,  at  first 
unconsciously,  in  the  latent  state ;  then  little  by  little  it  dis- 
engages itself,  rises  from  the  mysterious  depths  of  consciousness, 
and  makes  its  presence  felt  by  mute  agitations;  then  it  finds  a 
voice,  it  speaks,  it  commands,  it  signifies  its  will  by  injunctions 
more  and  more  clear,  more  and  more  emphatic ;  and  finally,  when 
it  is  misunderstood,  by  that  indefinable  suffering,  now  dull,  now 
sharp  and  piercing,  which  is  called  remorse."  8 

Surely  the  natural  evolution  of  the  individual  tends  of 
itself  to  produce  moral  conceptions  ;  but  the  educator  can  aid 
this  development.  For  this  purpose  it  is  necessary  that  he 
exercise  the  child  in  judging  of  the  actions  of  others  ;  that  in 
accurate  and  striking  narratives  he  show  him  men  who  have 

1  M.  Egger,  op.  cit.,  p.  68. 

3  M.  P<<rez,  La  Psychologic  de  I  'enfant,  p.  343. 

8  M.  Vessiot,  op.  cit.,  p.  33. 


218  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

done  good  or  evil ;  that  he  be  required  to  express  his  opin- 
ion on  the  virtues  and  vices  of  others,  and  invited  to  give 
his  reasons  why  such  an  action  seems  to  him  good  and 
another  bad.  The  child  should  also  be  allowed  to  accomplish 
at  his  own  risk  and  peril  the  actions  suggested  to  him  by 
his  own  initiative  ;  he  should  be  accustomed  at  an  early  hour 
to  make  decisions,  and  thus  acquire  the  feeling  of  his  own 
responsibility ;  and  should  be  furnished  with  frequent  occa- 
sions for  overcoming  his  inclinations  and  for  conquering  his 
evil  instincts.1 

In  other  terms,  we  must  appeal  as  early  as  possible  to  the 
experience  of  the  child.  Moral  conceptions  cannot  be  trans- 
mitted from  without  like  geometrical  truths ;  they  ought  to 
spring  spontaneously  from  personal  reflection  and  internal 
emotions.  Conscience  will  be  slow  to  appear  in  children 
who  have  not  been  accustomed  to  act  for  themselves  or  to 
judge  of  the  actions  of  others. 

"  It  is  within  himself,"  continues  the  author  whom  we  have 
just  quoted,  "  that  the  child  carries  his  rule  of  conduct ;  it  is 
within  himself  that  he  must  be  taught  to  look  for  it ;  and  when 
the  teacher  commands,  he  should  try  to  make  it  understood  that 
it  is  not  in  his  own  name  that  he  speaks,  but  in  the  name  of  the 
moral  law  which  is  inscribed  in  the  heart  of  the  child,  and  of 
which  he,  the  teacher,  is  but  the  echo  and  the  interpreter.  To 
lead  the  child  to  behave  in  the  absence  of  his  teacher,  and  of  all 
those  who  have  the  authority  to  make  him  do  right  and  punish 
him  for  having  done  wrong,  just  as  he  would  behave  in  their 
presence ;  within  himself  to  establish  a  point  of  support  against 

1  This  was  the  method  followed  by  Pestalozzi.  "  Instead  of  giving 
his  children  direct  lessons  in  morals,  he  shrewdly  took  advantage  of 
all  the  events  which  occurred  in  the  house.  They  were  so  numerous 
that  each  day  presented  many  occasions  for  making  felt  the  difference 
between  good  and  evil,  between  what  is  just  and  what  is  unjust. 
(Pompee,  Etudes  sur  Pestalozzi,  p.  250.) 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  219 

himself ;  to  make  him  see  that  he  can  succeed  in  governing  him- 
self without  the  help  of  others,  and  to  lead  him  insensibly  to 
do  without  that  exterior  direction ;  this  is  the  true  method  of 
education. " * 

In  other  terms,  it  is  necessary  that  every  moral  virtue 
taught  to  children  should  be  intimately  connected,  as 
Pestalozzi  said,  "  with  an  intuitive  and  sensible  experience 
which  is  their  own."  2 

228.  DIFFICULTIES  OF  THIS  EDUCATION. — There  is  such 
a  distance  between  the  natural  state  of  the  child,  cariug 
simply  for  his  pleasures  and  his  interest,  and  the  normal 
state  of  an  enlightened  conscience,  that  at  first  thought  we 
might  be  tempted  to  despair  of  success  and  to  believe  impos- 
sible the  evolution  which  leads  the  mind  to  the  conception  of 
the  good. 

But  in  this  delicate  work  nature  has  provided  us  with 
powerful  auxiliaries ;  and  if  it  is  difficult  to  suggest  to  the 
child  the  abstract  idea  of  duty,  it  is  very  much  easier  to 
accustom  him  practically  to  fulfil  certain  duties. 

Especially  when  it  is  a  question  of  duties  towards  other 
men,  the  child  will  be  aided  by  his  natural  feelings  of 
sympathy  and  benevolence ;  and  from  the  practice  of  these 
duties  there  will  gradually  be  evolved  the  idea  of  duty  in 
itself. 

1  M.  Vessiot,  op.  cit.,  p.  35. 

2  "  Elementary  moral  education,"  said  Pestalozzi,  "  comprises  three 
distinct  parts :  it  is  first  necessary  to  give  children  a  moral  conscious- 
ness by  awakening  in  them  pure  feelings;  it  is  next  necessary  to 
accustom  them  by  practice  to  conquer  themselves  in  order  to  devote 
themselves  to  whatever  is  just  and  good ;  and  finally,  they  must  be 
led  to  make,  by  reflection  and  comparison,  a  just  idea  of  law  and  of 
the  moral  duties  which  are  incumbent  on  them  from  their  position 
and  their  surroundings."    (Roger  de  Guimps,  Histoire  de  Pestalozzi, 
p.  206.) 


220  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

"  It  is  from  the  first  movements  of  the  heart,"  exclaims  Rous- 
seau, "  that  arise  the  first  voices  of  the  conscience ;  from  the 
feelings  of  love  and  hate  are  born  the  first  notions  of  good  and 
evil;  justice  and  goodness  are  not  mere  abstract  terms  conceived 
by  the  understanding,  but  real  affections  of  the  soul  enlightened 
by  reason." 

The  virtues  relative  to  personal  duties  will  be  acquired 
with  more  difficulty ;  but  here  again  the  natural  emotions, 
such  as  self-love  and  the  sentiment  of  the  useful,  will  come 
in  aid  of  moral  education.  We  are  in  no  wise  forbidden  to 
show  the  child  that  his  interest  and  his  duty  are  in  accord  in 
imposing  on  him  moderation  in  his  desires  and  resistance  to 
his  evil  inclinations. 

But,  above  all  and  in  all  periods  of  the  moral  life,  example 
will  be  the  great  teacher.  Before  imposing  a  moral  law  on 
the  obedience  of  the  child  as  a  rule  of  command,  it  must  be 
proposed  to  his  imitation  as  an  insinuating  example.  A 
child  is  above  all  else  an  imitator,  and  the  great  secret  of 
moral  education  is  to  know  how  to  take  advantage  of  this 
instinct.  Let  us  not  forget  that  perhaps  the  most  beautiful 
book  of  religious  ethics  is  entitled,  "  Imitation  of  Jesus 
Christ. " 

229.  POWER  OF  THE  IMITATIVE  INSTINCT  IN  THE  CHILD. — 
The  power  of  the  imitative  instinct  in  the  child  is  due  to 
several  causes  ;  and  first  of  all  to  his  ignorance.  Having  as 
yet  at  his  disposal  but  a  small  amount  of  knowledge  and  a 
very  slender  stock  of  ideas,  the  child  is  at  the  mercy  of  the 
perceptions  which  incite  him  on  all  sides.  His  supple 
thought,  free  from  prepossessions,  responds  to  the  call  of 
exterior  images,  and  follows  without  resistance  the  current 
into  which  it  is  urged  by  the  impressions  which  strike  it. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  child  is  weak ;  he  is  lacking  in  per- 
sonality. He  needs  to  act,  but  his  will  does  not  yet  exist. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  221 

Powerless  to  act  from  his  own  initiative,  he  acts  in  accord- 
ance with  what  he  sees  others  do.  His  weakness  is  the 
principal  cause  of  his  imitative  disposition. 

Sympathy  is  still  another  source  of  the  imitative  instinct. 
We  all  have  a  secret  tendency  to  put  ourselves  in  agreement, 
in  our  sentiments  and  actions,  with  the  men  who  surround  us, 
and  particularly  with  those  whom  we  love.  To  love  any  one 
is  to  desire  to  resemble  him.  The  child  who  feels  an  ardent 
affection  for  his  companions  is  naturally  inclined  to  imitate 
them.  The  more  causes  of  sympathy  there  are,  such  as 
resemblances  in  condition  or  age,  the  more  powerfully  will 
the  imitative  instinct  manifest  itself. 

Finally,  let  us  add  that  in  imitation,  however  slavish  it 
may  appear,  there  is  sometimes,  as  it  were,  a  first  soaring  of 
the  child's  liberty,  of  his  aspiration  after  the  ideal.  The 
child  wishes  to  rise  superior  to  himself ;  and  this  is  why  he 
will  imitate  by  preference,  after  his  companions,  his  supe- 
riors and  his  teachers. 

"  All  men  have  a  tendency  towards  imitation,  but  this  is  par- 
ticularly noticeable  in  the  child.  Not  yet  having  a  pronounced 
individuality  and  a  strong  character,  he  does  not  suffice  for  him- 
self. He  easily  yields  to  an  impulsion  from  without.  The  per- 
sons who  surround  him  act  upon  him  more  than  he  acts  upon 
them,  and  he  is  readily  moulded  after  the  pattern  which  they 
set  before  him,  especially  if  they  are  older,  stronger,  more 
capable,  and  more  experienced  than  he  is." l 

230.  HISTORICAL  EXAMPLES. — If  it  is  true  that  none  of 
our  actions  are  lost  to  us,  that  each  of  our  deeds,  good  or 
bad,  has  its  effect  upon  our  future  conduct,  and  aids  in 
directing  the  current  of  our  life  towards  the  good  or 
towards  the  bad,  it  is  also  certain  that  the  actions  of 
other  men,  of  those  who  have  preceded  us  on  this  earth, 

i  Gauthey,  op.  tit.,  II.,  p.  388. 


222  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

as  well  as  of  those  who  are  living  around  us,  exercise 
upon  our  character,  however  little  they  may  be  present  to 
our  imagination,  a  profound  influence.  The  past  sheds 
light  upon  the  present.  Souls  that  have  disappeared  live 
again  in  the  souls  of  the  new  generation.  The  examples  of 
the  ancients  mould  the  minds  of  those  who  have  just  come 
upon  the  theatre  of  life,  and,  as  some  one  has  said,  "the 
dead  govern  the  living." 

Present  to  the  child,  then,  all  the  beautiful  and  noble 
lessons  which  history  teaches.  By  narratives  and  por- 
traitures infuse  into  him  the  virtues  which  have  made  his 
ancestors  illustrious. 

"Towards  the  achievement  of  a  noble  life,"  says  an  English 
teacher,  "  there  is  nothing  more  important  than  an  imagination 
well  decorated  with  heroic  pictures;  in  other  words,  there  is  no 
surer  method  of  becoming  good,  and,  it  may  be,  great  also,  than  an 
early  familiarity  with  the  lives  of  great  and  good  men.  .  .  .  There 
is  no  kind  of  sermon  so  effective  as  the  example  of  a  great  man. 
.  .  .  Let  us,  therefore,  turn  our  youthful  imaginations  into  great 
picture-galleries  and  Walhallas  of  the  heroic  souls  of  all  times 
and  of  all  places ;  and  we  shall  be  incited  to  follow  after  good 
and  be  ashamed  to  commit  any  sort  of  baseness  in  the  direct 
view  of  such  a  'cloud  of  witnesses.' "  1 

Of  course  it  is  not  proposed  to  make  of  our  pupils  so 
many  heroes,  —  the  occasions  for  heroism  are  rare  ;  but  still 
we  must  not  fear  to  present  to  children  a  very  elevated 
moral  ideal.  He  who  has  been  made  capable  of  being  heroic 
on  one  solemn  occasion,  will  be  more  surely  virtuous  at 
every  hour  of  his  life.  Then  familiarize  the  mind  which  is 
to  be  made  moral  ' '  with  the  real  blood  and  bone  of  human 
heroism  which  the  select  pages  of  biography  present." 
From  this  high  moral  excitation  something  will  be  reflected 

1  Blackie,  op.  cit,  pp.  81,  82. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  223 

even  on  the   most  common   and  the   most  humble  social 
conditions. 

But  history  holds  in  reserve,  in  order  to  offer  them  to 
the  imitation  of  those  who  study  it,  very  many  examples 
of  familiar  and  simple  virtues  accessible  to  all.  The  Lives 
of  Plutarch,  to  cite  but  this  author,  contain  a  treasure  of 
beautiful  models  by  which  the  whole  world  may  profit,  and 
which  are,  as  has  been  said,  "  the  very  matter  out  of  which 
every  moral  force  will  always  be  made." 

231.  LIVING  EXAMPLES.  —  But  there  is  something  which 
is  worth  even  more  than  the  example  of  the  dead ;  this 
is  intercourse  with  the  living.  The  child  prefers  to  imitate 
those  whom  he  sees,  those  whom  h«  meets.  The  finest 
historical  narratives  are  cold,  compareu  with  the  real  and 
present  example  of  a  virtuous  life.  A  good  man  not  only 
assures  his  own  virtues,  but  contributes  to  the  virtue  of 
others  by  the  magnetic  influence  which  he  diffuses  about  him 
wherever  he  goes,  and  by  the  beneficent  radiance  of  his 
moral  qualities.  There  is  a  contagion  of  good,  as  well  as  a 
contagion  of  evil  and  of  disease. 

Some  of  the  best  souls  in  this  world  have  acquired  their 
moral  superiority  less  by  an  effort  of  their  will  than  by  a 
natural  imitation  of  the  good  people  who  surround  them. 
How  many  families  there  are  in  which  virtue  is  a  tradition, 
an  inheritance,  which  is  transmitted  from  parents  to  children 
as  surely  and  as  directly  as  a  patrimony  !  Marcus  Aurelius, 
the  wise  Roman  Emperor,  relates  in  his  Thoughts  that  he 
was  indebted  to  several  members  of  his  family  for  some 
of  his  best  qualities. 

"  My  uncle,"  he  says,  "  taught  me  patience ;  from  my  father  I 
inherit  modesty  ;  to  my  mother  I  owe  my  piety." 

Happy  the  men  who,  like  Marcus  Aurelius,  breathe  from 
the  day  of  their  birth  an  atmosphere  of  virtue,  and  to 


224  THEOKETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

acquire  good  morals  have  only  to  submit  to  the  gracious  and 
natural  incitements  of  example. 

"Of  all  the  ways  whereby  Children  are  to  be  instructed  and 
their  manners  formed,  the  plainest,  easiest,  and  most  efficacious 
is  to  set  before  their  Eyes  the  Examples  of  those  things  you 
would  have  them  do  or  avoid.  .  .  .  Virtues  and  Vices  can  by 
no  Words  be  so  plainly  set  before  their  understandings  as  the 
Actions  of  other  men  will  show  them,  when  you  direct  their 
observation,  and  bid  them  view  this  or  that  good  or  bad  Quality 
in  their  Practice.  .  .  .  Nothing  sinks  so  gently  and  so  deep  into 
Men's  minds  as  Example"  1 

232.  EXAMPLES  AND  PRECEPTS.  —  It  must  not  be  imag- 
ined, however,  that  example,  which  is  precept  in  action, 
absolves  us  absolutely  from  abstract  precept,  which  appeals 
to  the  mind.  It  is  well  to  present  to  the  child,  in  a  clear 
and  expressive  form,  the  principal  maxims  of  duty,  and  to 
nourish  his  memory  with  beautiful  moral  sentences.  Always 
present  to  the  imagination,  these  formulas  will  lend  us 
support  against  the  temptations  of  pleasure  and  the 
sophisms  of  passion ;  they  will  preserve  us  on  many  occa- 
sions of  weakness. 

"  It  is  well,"  says  an  author  whom  we  have  often  quoted,  "  to 
carry  about  with  us  the  purifying  influence  of  a  high  ideal  of 
human  conduct,  fervidly  and  powerfully  expressed.  Superstitious 
persons  carry  amulets  externally  on  their  breasts;  carry  you  a 
select  store  of  holy  texts  within,  and  you  will  be  much  more 
effectively  armed  against  the  powers  of  evil  than  any  most 
absolute  monarch  behind  a  bristling  body-guard.  Such  texts  you 
may  find  occurring  in  many  places,  from  the  Kalidasas  and 
Sakyatnunis  of  the  East,  to  Pythagoras,  Plato,  Aristotle,  and 
Epictetus  in  the  West ;  but  if  you  are  wise,  and  above  the  seduc- 
tion of  showy  and  pretentious  novelties,  you  will  store  your  mem- 
ory early  in  youth  with  the  golden  texts  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments."  2 

1  John  Locke,  op.  cit.,  p.  81.  2  Blackie,  op.  cit.,  p.  79. 


MORAL   EDUCATION.  225 

We  do  not  believe  in  the  magic  power  of  words  ;  but  who 
does  not  know  by  experience  what  power  there  is  in  a 
moment  of  moral  crisis,  in  an  idea  suddenly  evoked  from  a 
maxim  or  from  a  rule  of  conduct,  especially  if  this  precept  is 
associated  with  the  recollection  of  the  one  who  has  transmit- 
ted it  to  us,  —  the  image  of  a  mother,  a  father,  a  venerated 
teacher  ? 

But  to  be  efficacious  the  precept  must  deeply  penetrate  the 
soul ;  it  must  not  remain  merely  on  the  lips  or  in  the  memory, 
but  must  become,  so  to  speak,  a  living  part  of  the  conscience. 
We  must  not  be  content  with  a  borrowed  morality,  founded 
on  maxims  learned  out  of  books. 

"What  would  be  thought,"  said  the  wise  Plutarch,  "of  a  man 
who,  going  to  his  neighbor  in  search  of  fire,  and  finding  the 
hearth  all  aglow,  should  stay  there  to  warm  himself  and  no 
longer  think  of  returning  to  his  own  home  ?  " 

This  is  the  picture  of  a  man  who  is  content  to  recite  well- 
conned  moral  discourses  ;  who  to  be  sure  of  conducting  him- 
self properly  has  always  to  consult  a  book,  as  a  sort  of 
gospel ;  and  who  has  not  been  able  to  kindle  in  his  own 
heart  an  inner  fire  of  noble  inspirations. 

233.  THE  LOVE  OF  THE  GOOD. — Exercised  and  instructed 
by  his  own  experience,  accustomed  to  take  account  of  his 
own  actions,  to  judge  the  actions  of  others,  and  to  weigh  the 
consequences  of  them,  initiated  by  his  acts  into  the  joy  of 
duty  accomplished,  encouraged  by  the  examples  which  have 
been  set  before  him,  sustained  by  the  exhortations  and 
precepts  of  his  teachers,  the  child  will  rise  little  by  little  to 
the  moral  life.  In  this  complex  work,  of  which  Mr.  Bain  has 
said  that  ' '  the  conditions  to  be  fulfilled  are  so  numerous  that 
it  is  hardly  possible  to  indicate  with  precision  the  best 
method  to  be  adopted,"  the  principal  part  belongs,  not  to 
books,  not  to  lessons,  but  to  the  character  of  parents 


226  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

and  teachers.  The  moral  law  cannot  be  for  the  child 
a  cold,  impersonal  abstraction  ;•  it  must  be  made  incarnate 
in  a  living  being.  The  father,  the  mother,  and  the 
teacher  represent  to  the  eyes  of  the  child  the  moral  law ; 
and  they  should  represent  it,  not  as  impassive,  unfeeling 
beings,  but  as  living  personalities  who  are  touched  at  the 
sight  of  evil,  who  are  full  of  affection  and  tenderness.  If 
religion  has  such  a  profound  influence  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  morality,  it  is  because  it  presents  to  the  minds 
of  men  the  idea  of  a  supreme  father,  the  benefactor  of 
humanity,  who  by  his  sovereign  will  requires  virtue  of  his 
children.  The  knowledge  of  what  is  good  does  not  suffice  ; 
there  must  be  joined  to  this  the  love  of  what  is  good.  And 
it  is  by  loving  virtuous  men  set  before  him  for  examples,  and 
by  loving  a  divine  model  of  every  virtue,  that  the  child  will 
come  to  love  the  good  itself. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

WILL,  LIBERTY,  AND  HABIT. 

234.  KNOWLEDGE  AND  WILL. — The  more  we  enlighten 
the  intelligence  the  more  we  develop  the  moral  conscious- 
ness.    It  suffices  to  throw  a  glance  over  the  morals  of  the 
ancients  and  over  the  morals  of  the  moderns,  to  judge  of 
the  progress  which  men  have  gradually  made  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  their  duties.      Men  often  do  wrong  through  igno- 
rance of  what  is  right.     Moreover,  the  knowledge  of  what  is 
right   implies   in   itself   a   certain   power   of   determination 
towards  the  right.     To  know  exactly  where  one's  duty  lies 
is  of  itself  one  excellent   condition  for  doing  one's  duty. 
Let  us  admit,  however,  that  knowledge  does  not  suffice,  that 
there  must  be  added  to  it  will  or  moral  energy.     How  many 
men  are  capable  of  making  marvelous  dissertations  on  all 
the  shades  of  duty,  and  yet  are  incapable  of  becoming  virtu- 
ous men!     They  cannot  will  the  good  which  they  know. 
It  is  the  reason  that  judges  what  must  be  done,  but  it  is 
the  will  alone  which  determines  us  to  do  it.     The  education 
of  the  will,  then,  is  one  essential  part  of  moral  education. 

235.  DEFINITION  OF  THE  WILL.  —  In  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury  the  term  will  was  sometimes  employed  to  designate 
all   the   powers  of   the   soul   except  the  intelligence, — the 
inclinations,  the  tendencies,  the  desires  ;  and  Condillac  said 
of  the  will,  "  that  it  comprehends  all  the  operations  which 
are  born  of  need."     In  contemporary  psychology  the  signifi- 

227 


228  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

cation  of  the  term  "  will "  is  better  defined,  more  fixed  ;  and 
the  will,  or  power  to  do  what  we  wish,  properly  designates 
the  power  which  the  soul  has  of  self-determination,  con- 
sciously and  with  reflection,  spontaneously  and  freely, 
towards  an  act  of  its  own  choice. 

236.  THE  WILL  IN  THE  CHILD.  — The   will  thus  under- 
stood is,  like  the  reason,  a  prerogative  of  man.     Man  alone, 
in  the  full  exercise  of  all  his  faculties,  is  capable  of  willing. 
Doubtless  the  animal  and  the  child  are  capable  of  self-de- 
termination ;  they  act,  and  by  an  abuse  of  terms  the  princi- 
ple of  these  determinations  and  actions  is  called  will.     But 
this  irreflective  power  of  determination  and  action  is  but  a 
semblance  of  will.     The  child  is  obstinate,  but  he  has  no 
will.     In  him,  as  in  the  animal,  action,  however  spontane- 
ous it  may  be,  is  not  master  of  itself.     Provoked  by  blind 
desire,  by  irresistible  need,  by  disorderly  caprice,  it  is  not 
in  possession  of  itself ;  it  is  but  the  pale  image  of  the  real 
human  will,  which  reflects,  calculates,  knows  where  it  goes, 
and  consequently  masters  itself  and  governs  itself. 

237.  DIFFERENCE    BETWEEN   WILL   AND   DESIRE. — The 
will  is  surely  something  else  than  desire.     It  is  not  possible 
to  admit,  with  certain  philosophers,  that  the  will  is  but  an 
ardent  and  strong  desire,  just  as  the  attention  is  but  a  domi- 
nant sensation.     The  will  thus  understood  would  not  affran- 
chise us  from  our  inclinations  and  our  passions ;   it  would 
be  but  the  consummation  of  desire.     It  would  be  included 
in  the  category  of  passive,  fatal  dispositions ;  it  would  not 
be  the  principle  of  liberty. 

Desire  is  but  the  solicitation  of  an  agreeable  object  which 
procures  us  pleasure,  and  thus  invites  us,  and  sometimes  de- 
termines us,  to  go  in  search  of  it.  The  will,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  the  resolution  which  we  take  of  ourselves  to 
accomplish  an  act,  agreeable  or  disagreeable,  as  the  case 
may  be. 


WILL,   LIBERTY,   AND   HABIT.  229 

There  are  cases  where  desire  and  will  are  in  accord,— 
where  we  will  what  we  desire ;  but  even  then  our  conscious- 
ness sharply  distinguishes  the  attraction  which  the  thing 
desired  exercises  on  the  feelings,  from  the  power  which  we 
have  of  yielding  to  that  attraction. 

In  other  cases  the  will  is  in  opposition  to  desire ;  and  it  is 
then  especially  that  the  distinction  between  the  two  facts  is 
clear  and  striking.  For  example,  indolence  attracts  me  and 
pleases  me ;  all  the  pleasures  of  the  far  niente  haunt  my 
imagination ;  all  my  bodily  inclinations  incline  me  to  indo- 
lence ;  and  yet,  sustained  by  the  idea  of  my  interest  or  of 
my  duty,  I  resist  these  impulses ;  I  will  to  work,  and  I  set 
myself  to  work.  How,  in  this  case,  and  in  all  analogous 
"  cases,  can  we  confound  desire  and  will,  the  current  and  the 
power  which  ascends  the  current? 

Finally,  in  other  cases,  the  desire  is  the  only  thing  ;  by  its 
violence  it  carries  away  the  soul,  which  has  neither  the  time 
to  reflect  nor  the  power  to  will ;  but  the  act  is  then  no  more 
voluntary  than  the  mind  is  truly  attentive  when  it  is  domi- 
nated and  absorbed  by  a  sensation.  The  fixity  of  thought 
which  allows  itself  to  be  captivated  and  made  immobile,  so 
to  speak,  by  a  powerful  impression,  is  no  more  attention 
than  the  impulse  of  desire  is  will.  Just  as  the  attention 
disengages  and  transports  the  thought,  attaches  it  to  the 
object  which  it  has  chosen,  or  detaches  it  from  it  when  it 
pleases,  so  the  will  withholds,  arrests,  or  pursues  the  act 
which  it  has  resolved  on. 

238.  DIFFERENCE  BETWEEN  WILL  AND  IDEA. — But  some 
one  will  say,  if  the  will  is  distinguished  from  desire  and 
from  sensibility,  it  is  precisely  because  it  is  confounded  with 
idea  and  with  intelligence.  In  fact,  motives  borrowed  from 
our  prevision,  from  our  reason,  are  the  only  ones  which  can 
counterbalance  the  attraction  of  desire  and  assure  the  tri- 


230  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

umph  of  the  will ;  but  because  the  will  grafts  itself,  so  to 
speak,  upon  an  idea,  it  is  no  reason  for  thinking  that  it  is 
the  same  thing  as  the  idea.  Does  it  not  happen  to  us  every 
moment  to  have  a  very  definite  idea  of  a  thing  to  be  done, 
and  yet  not  to  do  it,  because  we  do  not  will  to  do  it? 

239.  RELATION  OF  THE  WILL  TO  THE  SENSIBILITIES.  — 
But  after  having'  shown  that  the  will  is  something  distinct 
and  irreducible, .  after  having  proved  that  it  is  an  inde- 
pendent power,  we  must  hasten  to  add  that  this  inde- 
pendence is  not  absolute ;  that  in  order  to  will  it  is  not 
useless  to  desire,  and  that  it  is  necessary  to  think. 

Let  us  not  imagine,  then,  that  to  prepare  in  man  for  the 
reign  of  the  will,  we  must  destroy  in  the  child  the  empire 
of  the  desires.  Children  of  little  sensibility  are  very  likely 
to  become  men  of  little  energy.  On  the  contrary,  lively, 
ardent  inclinations  will  be  the  cradle  of  a  strong  will, 
provided  reflection  co-operates  with  them.1 

Let  us  excite  the  desires  of  the  child,  while  giving  them 
direction ;  let  us  teach  him  to  love  more  and  more  what 
he  ought  to  love ;  and,  enlightened  by  intelligence,  his 
desires  will  be  transformed  into  wills. 

But  the  will,  however  energetic  we  may  suppose  it  to  be, 
is  almost  always  too  weak  to  carry  on  a  constant  struggle 
with  the  inclinations.  In  this  contest,  it  would  very  soon 
exhaust  its  forces. 

Doubtless  the  will  manifests  all  its  power  only  in 
effort  and  in  contest ;  but,  happily,  the  contest  is  not 
always  necessary ;  and  if  there  are  toiling,  heroic  wills 
which  triumph  over  the  passions  which  they  resist,  there 
are  also  compliant,  easy-going  wills,  which  are  but  the 

1  Mr.  Sully  justly  remarks  that  the  exercise  of  physical  activity  is 
itself  a  rudimentary  education  of  the  will. 


WILL,   LIBERTY,   AND   HABIT.  231 

adhesion  of  a  well-endowed  soul  to  legitimate  desires.  In 
fact,  most  wills  are  of  this  sort ;  and  in  the  ordinary  course 
of  a  well-regulated  life,  that  which  is  willed  is  at  the 
same  time  that  which  is  felt  and  loved. 

The  end  of  education  ought,  then,  to  be  to  associate  and 
to  unite  desire  and  will,  —  to  bring  into  accord  pleasure  and 
duty.  Whatever  can  be  done  to  give  the  inclinations 
wisdom,  will  also  profit  the  will  and  will  make  its  exercise 
easier. 

240.  RELATION  OF  THE  WILL  TO   THE  INTELLIGENCE.— 
The    philosophers   of  the   seventeenth    century,    especially 
Bossuet,    included  the   will   among   the    intellectual  opera- 
tions.    Every  act  of   the   will   certainly  implies  an  act  of 
thought.     The  will  might  be  defined  a  thought  in  action. 
There  is  no  will,  a  philosopher  has  said,  where  there  is  no 
reason  for  willing.   In  proportion  as  we  are  more  enlightened, 
and '  especially  as  we  are  more  reflective ;  as  we  conceive 
more  clearly  what  we    have  to  do,    and    the  better  under- 
stand why  we  ought  to  do  it,  the  more  are  we  our  own 
masters,  the  more  do  we  belong  to  ourselves ;  in  a  word, 
the  more  will  we  have. 

Let  us,  then,  train  the  child  to  reflect,  not  to  form  hasty 
resolutions,  not  to  yield  at  the  first  blow  to  the  calls  of 
his  desires,  but  to  weigh  the  pros  and  the  cons  before 
adopting  a  determination ;  and  in  this  way  we  shall 
increase  the  strength  of  the  will,  whose  power  varies  and 
is  modified  in  proportion  as  our  intellectual  energy 
diminishes  or  augments. 

241.  THE  WILL   AND  LIBERTY.  —  In  showing    the   con- 
trasts and  the  agreements,  between    the  will  on    the    one 
hand    and    the    sensibilities   and    the    intelligence    on    the 
other,    we   have    defined    the    essential    characteristics    of 
the  will,  which  are  reflection  and  liberty. 


232  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

There  are  no  acts  truly  voluntary,  save  those  which 
are  deliberate,  which  suppose  that  a  resolution  has  been 
taken  after  reflection,  and  the  voluntary  act  is  free, 
precisely  because  it  issues,  not  from  an  inconsiderate 
and  fatal  instinct,  but  from  a  studied  decision  and  from 
choice.  Real  liberty  is  nothing  but  the  faculty  of  choosing 
with  reflection  and  with  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
matter,  among  several  possible  actions,  the  one  which  we 
prefer,  the  one  which  we  think  the  best.  Doubtless  this 
liberty  does  not  give  us  the  power  to  break  abruptly 
with  our  past,  to  loose  ourselves  from  all  solidarity  with 
what  we  have  already  done,  with  our  inclinations  and  our 
habits  of  mind ;  it  does  not  create  acts  absolutely  inde- 
terminate, independent  of  all  condition,  —  in  a  word,  it 
does  not  perform  miracles.  But  it  does  enfranchise  us  so 
far  as  this  is  possible ;  it  rescues  us  from  the  impulse 
of  the  moment,  from  the  absolute  empire  of  habit,  from 
the  yoke  of  passion,  from  the  tyranny  of  fashion  and 
of  example ;  it  permits  us  to  .govern  ourselves  by  our- 
selves and  by  our  reason,  and  it  is  in  this  that  we 
are  free. 

242.  CULTURE  OF  THE  WILL.  —  The  culture  of  the 
will  is  one  of  the  most  delicate  problems  of  education. 
To  develop  and  strengthen  the  will,  it  is  first  necessary 
to  respect  the  spontaneity  of  the  child,  which  is  the  germ 
of  his  independence  and  liberty.  Parents  who  are  too 
anxious  to  k '  break  the  wills  of  their  children "  are  pre- 
paring weak  and  flabby  characters  that  will  be  incapable 
of  self-control. 

Says  Kant :  "  We  must  not  break  the  wills  of  children,  but  only 
direct  them  in  such  a  way  that  they  will  know  how  to  yield  to 
natural  obstacles." 1 

1  Kant,  Pedagogic,  p.  226. 


WILL,   LIBERTY,  AND   HABIT.  233 

The  same  thought  inspired  Rousseau,  when,  in  the 
first  twelve  years  of  Emile's  education,  he  subjected  the 
conduct  of  the  child  to  the  sole  rule  of  necessity. 

"  Let  the  child  early  feel  upon  his  proud  head  the  hard  yoke 
which  nature  imposes  on  man,  —  the  heavy  yoke  of  necessity, 
under  which  every  finite  being  must  bend ;  let  him  see  that  this 
necessity  lies  in  things,  not  in  the  caprice  of  men."  l 

It  is  going  too  far,  however,  to  suppress  in  early 
education  the  commands  of  parents  and  teachers.  It  is 
well,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  will  of  the  child  feel  other 
wills  in  contact  with  his  own ;  but  on  one  condition,  — 
that  these  wills  shall  themselves  be  well  adjusted,  and 
that  the  orders  through  which  they  manifest  themselves 
shall  not  be  followed  by  counter-orders,  —  that  they  shall 
be  clear  and  inflexible.  The  caprices  of  a  wavering 
authority  which  contradicts  itself,  can  have  only  disas- 
trous effects.  Pulled  in  different  directions,  the  will  of 
the  child  will  itself  become  capricious  and  mobile. 

The  child  should  be  neither  a  slave  nor  a  despot. 
He  should  neither  be  constrained  blindly  to  obey 
unreasonable  orders,  nor  crossed  in  all  his  inclinations. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  should  not  be  gratified  in  all 
that  he  wishes. 

"  Parents,"  says  Kant,  "  often  make  a  mistake  in  refusing  their 
children  everything  they  demand.  It  is  absurd  to  refuse  without 
reason  what  they  naturally  expect  from  the  goodness  of  their  par- 
ents. 

"  On  the  other  hand,  children  are  spoiled  by  gratifying  all  their 
wishes.  Doubtless  they  are  prevented  by  this  means  from  show- 
ing their  bad  humor,  but  they  become  all  the  more  headstrong." 

*  Smile,  L,  II. 


234  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"We  must  at  the  same  time  know  how  to  yield  and  to 
resist,  and  especially  to  resist.  By  always  gratifying  the 
caprices  of  the  child,  by  flattering  his  instincts,  we  doubt- 
less emancipate  his  will,  but  we  also  make  it  disorderly, 
and  in  a  sense  weaken  it.  In  fact,  will  supposes  effort, 
domination  over  one's  self.  By  resisting  the  child,  we 
teach  him  to  resist  himself.  It  is  only  through  the 
acquired  habit  of  obeying  others,  that  he  will  later  become 
capable  of  obeying  his  own  reason. 

243.  PRACTICAL  FEELING  OF  LIBERTY. — There  is  a 
great  practical  interest  in  often  pausing  to  reflect  as 
follows,  with  reference  to  a  finished  course  of  action : 
"Such  a  fault  might  have  been  avoided.  Such  a  quality 
might  have  been  acquired  more  quickly.  Finally,  some- 
thing different  and  better  might  have  been  done."  This 
is  a  certain  means  of  increasing  our  faith  in  the  efficacy 
of  our  acts,  of  fortifying  in  our  souls  the  most  precious 
thing  in  this  world,  —  I  mean  the  actual  feeling  of  our 
liberty,  by  ridding  ourselves  of  that  harassing  notion  of  ne- 
cessity, of  which  Stuart  Mill  said,  "The  idea  of  necessity 
weighed  upon  my  existence  like  an  evil  genius." 

Consequently,  let  us  accustom  the  child  to  make 
frequent  returns  upon  himself,  to  practice  in  a  certain 
measure  those  examinations  of  conscience  recommended 
by  the  philosophers  of  antiquity.  The  moral  calendar  of 
Franklin,  who  each  day  recorded  the  infractions  which 
he  had  committed  on  the  different  precepts  of  duty, 
is  an  ingenious  application  of  the  same  thought.1 

1  In  other  terms,  we  must  do  for  the  mind  what  Colonel  Amoras 
did  for  the  body :  he  gave  each  pupil  what  he  called  a  physiological 
chart,  in  which  were  noted  the  condition  of  each  organ  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  course  in  gymnastics  and  the  progress  made  after  each 
month  of  exercise. 


WILL,   LIBEKTY,   AND   HABIT.  235 

244.  EDUCATION   IN  LIBERTY. — Man  is  really  man  only 
when   he  unites   a  firm   and   ever-ready  will   to  vivid  and 
elevated  emotions,  and  to  an  enlightened  intelligence.     But 
this  quality  is  rarer  than  we  think.     Doubtless  if  we  con- 
sider only  that  inferior  will  which,  while  saying  "  I  will," 
does  nothing  in  reality  but  follow  inclination  or  habit,  —  in 
this  sense  we  use  our  will  each  moment  of  our  life ;  but  if 
we  must  restrict   the  term  will  to   a   deliberate  act,  deter- 
mined on  with  reflection,  who  does  not  see  that  the  human 
conscience  rarely  rises  to  this  effort?     The  most  often  we 
act,  I  do  not  say  without  motive,  which  is  impossible,  but 
without  reflective  motive,  and   our   actions  are   not  really 
willed.     There  are  men  who  are  almost  absolutely  lacking 
in  will,  who  in  some  sort  do  not  belong  to  themselves,  but 
who  live  a  passive,  mechanical  life,  the  slaves  of  their  own 
passions  and  the  toys  of  exterior  influences.     Even  those 
who  reflect  the  most  do  not  reflect  as  much  as  they  might. 
There  are  within  us  treasures  of  energy  which  we  do  not 
know  how  to  take  advantage  of,  and  we  certainly  have  more 
reserve  power  than  we  have  will. 

245.  No   ACT  is   INDIFFERENT. — For    real    training    in 
liberty,  and  for  assuring  to  it  all  its  power,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  no  one  of  our  acts  is  indifferent.     If  we  yield 
for  a  single  time  to  an  evil  inclination,  while  promising  our- 
selves to  resist  it  to-morrow,  we  are  guilty  of  a  grave  impru- 
dence ;  for  to-morrow  we  will  not  have  the  same  power  of 
resistance.     Every  act  performed  is  a  beginning  of  habit, 
and  habit  fetters  the  will.      For  the  very  reason  that  we 
have  even  once  acted  in  a  certain  way,  we  shall  be  a  little 
more  inclined  to  act  again  in  the  same  way. 

Then  let  us  keep  watch  over  all  the  acts  of  the  child. 
Let  us  not  excuse  him  from  any  fault  on  the  pretext  that 
this  will  be  the  only  instance  of  it,  and  that  it  will  be  time 


236  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

to  correct  it  when  it  occurs  again.  In  every  desire,  however 
feeble,  there  is  a  will  in  germ,  in  every  action  there  is  the 
beginning  of  habit. 

246.  THE  WILL  AND  HABITS. — The  activity  of  the  man 
and  of  the  child  manifests  itself,  as  we  know,  under  three 
forms  :  instinct,  will,  and  habit.    So  far  as  possible,  we  must 
substitute  will  for  instinct,  —  that  is,  reflective  resolutions 
for  blind   impulses ;    but   must  we  oppose   habits,    as   we 
oppose   instincts  ?      No ;    for  it   depends   on  us    to    make 
habit   an    easy  way  of  doing  without  effort  what  we   had 
previously  done  with  reflection,  with  will ;  habit  consolidates 
the  work  of  liberty. 

It  has  been  said,  not  without  truth,  that  "  two  obstacles, 
almost  invincible,  prevent  us  from  being  the  masters  of 
our  wills,  —  inclination  and  habit."  It  would,  however, 
be  a  grave  and  dangerous  error  to  attribute  to  these  two 
enemies  of  the  will  a  power  that  cannot  be  over- 
come. Inclination  can  always  be  controlled,  confronted 
with  our  interests  and  duty,  and  repressed  by  an  ener- 
getic act  of  the  will.  As  to  habit,  particularly  at  first,  it 
is  entirely  dependent  on  the  will,  since  it  depends  on  us 
to  prevent  the  repetition  of  the  act  which  engenders  habit. 
Even  when  it  has  become  inveterate,  we  may  succeed  in 
conquering  it, — if  not  at  once  and  by  a  simple  effort  of 
the  will,  at  least  by  a  prolonged  resistance  and  by  skillful 
tactics. 

247.  NECESSITY  OF  HABITS.  —  To  a  great  extent,  educa- 
tion is  but  the  art  of  forming  good  habits.     So  we  do  not 
comprehend   what  Rousseau  has  said  with  more  wit   than 
sense:    "Emile   must   be  allowed  to  learn  no  habit,   save 
that  of  having  none  at  all." 

Even  Kant  condemns  habits,  for  the  reason  that  "  the 


WILL,    LIBERTY,    AND    HABIT.  237 

more  habits  a  man  has,  the  less  free  and  independent 
is  he." 

The  ideal  of  Kant  and  Rousseau  would  be  a  liberty  al- 
ways active,  which  nothing  would  thwart ;  a  liberty  always 
alert,  always  in  movement,  which  would  determine  itself 
anew  in  every  circumstance  of  life.  But  habit  is  an  "  obe- 
dience," since  it  enchains  us  to  the  past.1  But  the  ideal  of 
Rousseau  and  Kant  cannot  be  realized.  It  is  impossible 
to  demand,  at  each  moment  of  existence,  that  display  of 
energy  which  is  involved  in  each  new  exercise  of  liberty. 
Happily,  human  weakness  may  repose  on  good  habits, 
which  exempt  it  from  efforts  ceaselessly  renewed,  and 
which  render  the  accomplishment  of  duty  natural,  easy, 
almost  instinctive.  The  body  cannot  always  be  awake  and 
erect ;  it  must  sleep  and  recline  ;  and  in  the  same  way 
activity  should  not  remain  incessantly  on  the  alert,  —  it 
must  seek  repose  and  must  sleep,  so  to  speak,  in  the  easy 
and  pleasant  paths  of  habit.  When  the  will  has  once 
purged  the  inclinations  and  regulated  the  habits,  it  can 
discharge  itself  in  part  upon  the  emotions  and  upon  the 
routine  government  of  the  soul ;  like  a  general  who,  hav- 
ing pacified'  a  country,  sheaths  his  sword,  but  does  not 
completely  disarm,  because  unforeseen  circumstances  and 
changes  in  life  may  at  any  moment  require  new  efforts 
of  the  will. 

Does  some  one  object  that  habit  diminishes  effort,  and 
consequently  merit?  We  reply,  with  M.  Marion,  "•  Merit 
and  effort  are  not  the  whole  of  morality.  I  am  surer  that 
a  man  will  do  right,  when  the  right  will  cost  him  no 
trouble."  2 

1  See  Vinet,  U  Education  la  Famille  et  la  Societe. 

2  M.  Marion,  in  La  Science  de  I' Education,  contained  in  the  Reforme 
universitaire,  April  1,  1885. 


238  THEOKETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

Then  let  us  not  demand  of  the  will  a  continuous  series 
of  feats  of  strength.  Moreover,  the  habits,  however 
numerous  they  may  be,  never  suppress  liberty,  especially 
if  we  make  of  liberty  itself,  —  that  is,  of  reflective  delib- 
eration,—  a  higher  habit,  which  dominates  all  the  others. 

248.  How  THE  HABITS  ARE  FORMED. — There  is  great 
need,  then,  that  education  should  form  good  habits,  — 
habits  of  mind,  habits  of  feeling,  habits  of  action.  How 
shall  it  form  them?  How  shall  it  succeed  in  creating 
that  second  nature  which  will  constitute  the  final  char- 
acter of  the  man? 

In  truth,  the  habits  are  formed  of  themselves  by  the 
repetition  of  the  same  act.  Some  are  derived  from  the 
inclinations  and  instincts ;  others  from  reflective  acts  in 
which  the  will  has  co-operated.  The  part  of  the  educator 
is,  then,  to  keep  watch,  both  over  the  instincts  and  the 
first  manifestations  of  the  will.  On  the  start  he  will  cut 
short  evil  tendencies,  and  nip  in  the  bud  vicious  inclina- 
tions. Evil  must  be  cut  away  to  the  very  root. 

"  Habit,"  says  Montaigne,  "  begins  in  a  mild  and  humble  fash- 
ion; it  establishes  in  us  little  by  little,  and  as  it  were  by  stealth, 
the  foot  of  its  authority ;  but  it  soon  reveals  to  us  a  furious  and 
tyrannical  face,  and  we  shall  hardly  be  able  to  rescue  ourselves 
again  from  its  hold." 

The  teacher  will  prevent  the  rise  of  bad  habits  by 
opposing  bad  acts  by  all  the  means  in  his  power,  —  by 
punishments  if  need  be.  To  promote  the  formation  of 
good  habits,  he  will  have  only  to  encourage  the  child  in 
acting,  and  with  the  aid  of  time  the  habit  will  be 
formed.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  impose,  in  a  trice, 
new  habits  which  will  be  in  contradiction  with  the  nature 
of  the  child.  If  the  act  which  you  command  is  repugnant 


WILL,   LIBERTY,   AND   HABIT.  239 

to  him,  that  act,  performed  contrary  to  his  will,  will  not 
leave  behind  it  a  certain  tendency  to  reproduce  itself, 
which  is  the  essential  condition  of  the  formation  of  habits. 
If,  then,  it  is  a  question  of  habits  that  are  somewhat  dif- 
ficult, to  which  the  child  does  not  tend  of  himself,  try  to 
manage  the  transitions ;  try  to  find  the  favorable  moment 
when  the  action  which  we  wish  to  transform  into  a  habit 
will  cost  the  child  the  least  trouble.  Let  us  be  content, 
at  first,  if  he  performs  the  act  with  indifference ;  he  will 
next  repeat  it  with  pleasure,  and  the  habit  will  be 
formed.  In  a  word,  let  us  insinuate  habits,  not  impose 
them.  "  A  new  idea,"  said  Fontenelle,  "  is  like  a 
wedge,  —  it  must  not  be  driven  in  by  the  blunt  end." 

249.  How  BAD  HABITS  ARE  TO  BE  CORRECTED.  —  But 
whatever  may  be  the  supervision  of  the  teacher,  it  is  not 
claimed  that  under  the  influence  of  external  circumstances 
a  bad  habit  will  not  make  its  appearance  in  the  child. 
Moreover,  when  he  enters  school  the  child  has  already 
contracted  certain  dispositions,  certain  bents  of  mind  and 
of  heart.  Is  it  possible  to  correct  the  vicious  element 
which  custom  has  once  introduced  into  the  activity  of 
the  child? 

Certainly  this  is  not  an  easy  thing ;  and  we  might  al- 
most always  despair  of  success,  if  we  had  no  other 
means  for  attaining  this  end  than  to  make  a  direct  attack 
on  the  evil  inclination  which  has  become  a  habit,  espe- 
cially if  we  wish  to  succeed  in  this  all  at  once.  Time  has 
presided  over  the  formation  of  habit,  and  time  is  also 
necessary  to  assure  its  disappearance.  Let  us  be  patient, 
therefore ;  let  us  be  satisfied  if  we  succeed  at  first  in  de- 
laying the  reappearance  of  the  evil  act.  Little  by  little 
the  empire  of  the  will  will  be  established,  and  the  child 
will  gradually  rid  himself  of  his  propensity,  especially  if 


240  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

we    have  had  skill  enough  to  establish  different    habits, 
which  draw  him  in  another  direction. 

250.  THE  WILL  AND  EDUCATION,  PUBLIC  OR  PRIVATE.  — 
At  first  sight  one  would  be  tempted  to  believe  that  pri- 
vate education  is  more  favorable  than  public  education,  for 
the  culture  of  the  will.  At  school,  of  course,  everything 
is  regulated  in  advance ;  everything  is  uniform ;  there  is 
no  initiative ;  there  is  a  common  level ;  the  child  is  never 
abandoned  to  himself ;  the  shortest  periods  of  the  day 
have  their  definite  occupation.  At  home,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  child  belongs  more  to  himself ;  he  is  not  sub- 
jected to  a  rule  so  inflexible ;  he  has  the  disposition  of 
his  own  time  and  occupation  ;  he  has  more  initiative. 

And  yet,  looking  at  things  more  closely,  we  come  to 
be  convinced  that  the  school  is  worth  more  than  the 
home  for  an  apprenticeship  in  effort.  Left  with  his  par- 
ents, the  child  grows  effeminate ;  under  their  direction, 
often  uncertain  and  variable,  his  acts  lack  continuity ; 
he  wavers  at  random  between  their  contradictory  orders 
and  his  own  caprices ;  he  does  not  learn  to  obey  a  fixed 
and  immutable  law.  Real  will  is  obedience  freely  given 
to  the  moral  law ;  and  to  train  the  child  to  this  obedi- 
ence, obedience  to  an  exact  rule  is  the  best  of  prepara- 
tions. "Obedience  to  law,"  says  an  unknown  author 
quoted  by  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure,  "  subjugates  the 
will  without  enfeebling  it,  while  obedience  to  men  in- 
jures and  enervates  it." 

Madame  Necker  does  not  hesitate  to  acknowledge  that 
"  public  education  has  the  decided  advantage,  so  far  as 
the  strengthening  of  character  and  the  development  of 
manly  virtues  and  energy  are  concerned." 

"  In  the  family  the  child  escapes  slackness  with  difficulty.  In  a 
quiet  household  there  is  no  energy  to  display.  All  the  weak  are 


WILL,   LIBERTY,   AND   HABIT.  241 

protected;  no  one  needs  to  defend  himself  or  to  defend  others. 
This  is  a  happy  condition,  doubtless,  but  power  of  soul  is  not  ac- 
quired in  this  way.  At  college  things  do  not  go  in  this  way.  The 
young  man  learns  to  know  his  own  rights,  as  well  as  those  of 
others.  He  becomes  accustomed  to  resist  solicitations  as  he  does 
threats,  when  he  believes  that  equity  is  on  his  side.  He  learns  the 
secret  of  good  conduct,  the  art  of  putting  himself  on  good  terms 
with  his  equals,  of  knowing  how  far  he  may  impose  on  them  by 
his  firmness,  or  of  making  himself  loved  by  his  condescension." l 

There  are  still  other  reasons  that  might  be  given.  In 
the  family  the  child  does  not  easily  have  opinions  of  his 
own.  He  lives  with  persons  who  are  "his  superiors  in 
experience,  whom  he  ought  to  respect,  and  whom  for  the 
most  part  he  loves  too  much  to  annoy  by  differing  with 
them  in  opinion.  At  school  and  college  he  lives  with 
equals,  and  he  has  the  right  of  free  speech.  In  the 
family  the  instruction  is  generally  too  easy ;  the  lesson,  so 
to  speak,  is  all  chewed;  the  child  has  not  efforts  enough 
to  make  to  assimilate  it.  At  college  he  needs  to  work 
more  for  himself,  and  to  seek  in  personal  reflection  the 
means  of  comprehending  a  lesson  uniformly  given  to  all. 

251.  SELF-EDUCATION.  —  It  is  not,  however,  at  school 
that  the  education  of  the  will  is  completed.  It  is  only  in 
society,  in  contact  with  the  difficulties  of  life,  that  the 
human  personality  is  really  formed.  And  this  is  doubt- 
less why  Comenius  reserved  to  the  university,  —  that  is, 
to  the  free  life  of  the  student,  —  the  task  of  developing 
the  will.  Experience  is  the  true  school  of  the  will. 

"  At  college  we  smooth  the  path  for  the  steps  of  the  child ;  but 
difficulty  is  precisely  the  education  of  the  will.  We  teach,  but 
one  really  knows  only  what  he  discovers.  We  are  guides  —  of 
whom?  Of  those  who  ought  to  guide  themselves." 

1  See  Considerations  sur  I' 'education  publique  et  I'education  privte. 


242  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

This  opposition  which  exists  between  the  development 
of  the  personal  will  and  school  life,  even  the  mildest  and 
freest,  disappears  the  day  when  the  child  is  handed  over 
to  himself.  It  is  especially  then  that  his  voluntary  ac- 
tivity will  find  occasion  for  exercise  and  growth ;  but  it 
is  then  also  that  his  will  will  incur  the  greatest  dangers. 
We  shall  have  taught  him  in  vain  to  will  in  the  narrow 
circle  of  childish  activity ;  he  will  be  likely  to  unlearn 
this  in  the  vast  field  of  manly  activity. 

"  With  the  will,"  as  it  has  been  justly  remarked,  "  the  work  of 
education  is  never*  finished.  The  child  who  has  learned  to  read 
has  not  to  go  back  to  it ;  it  is  finished.  With  the  will  it  is  never 
finished ;  we  are  always  going  back  to  it." 1 

252.  DIFFICULTY  OF  THE  EDUCATION  OF  THE  WILL. — 
With  the  aid  of  the  will  already  formed,  the  success  of 
intellectual  education,  as  of  moral  education,  is  assured. 
But  for  the  education  of  the  will  itself,  where  is  the  ful- 
crum, the  lever  upon  which  we  shall  press? 

Must  there  not  already  be  a  little  will,  in  order  that 
more  of  it  may  be  acquired?  What  shall  be  done  with 
the  weak  natures,  which  have  no  spring  in  them?  Is  it 
possible  to  give  them  will,  if  they  have  none?  "It  is  the 
will  which  we  have  to  right,"  says  Gauthey,  "and  we 
would  have  it  right  itself.  Let  weakness  produce 
strength,  and  evil  engender  the  good."  2 

La  Rochefoucauld  said  to  the  same  effect,  "Weakness 
is  the  only  defect  which  cannot  be  corrected."  Happily, 
nature  does  not  often  propose  to  us  this  insoluble 
problem.  It  is  rare,  if  ever,  that  a  child  is  absolutely 
deprived  of  the  germs  of  will.  If  he  has  not  enough  will 
to  oppose  his  defects,  he  will  always  have  enough  of  it 

1  Rousselot,  Pedagogic,  p.  263. 

8  Gauthey,  De  I'Education,  II.,  p.  266. 


WILL,  LIBERTY,   AND   HABIT.  243 

to  acquire  certain  virtues ;  for,  according  to  the  remark 
of  Bourdaloue,  "it  costs  less  to  enrich  one's  self  with 
a  thousand  virtues,  than  to  cure  one's  self  of  a  single 
fault." 

253.  GOOD  WILL.  —  It  would  be  of  no  account  to  train 
the  will  if  there  is  not  given  it  as  a  companion  a  love 
for  what  is  good.  In  itself,  in  fact,  the  will  may  be  an 
instrument  of  vice  as  well  as  an  instrument  of  virtue. 
In  their  way,  great  criminals  give  proof  of  will-power. 
We  may  will  the  evil  as  earnestly  as  the  good. 

It  is,  then,  a  good  will  that  it  is  especially  important  to 
train  and  strengthen,  —  that  good  will  of  which  Kant  said 
in  a  page  which  cannot  be  too  often  quoted : 

"  Of  all  that  it  is  possible  to  conceive  in  this  world,  and  even 
beyond  this  world,  there  is  but  one  thing  that  can  be  regarded  as 
good  without  restriction,  and  this  is  a  good  will.  Intelligence,  pen- 
etration, judgment,  and  all  the  qualities  of  mind ;  courage,  resolu- 
tion, and  perseverance,  or  qualities  of  temperament,  are  doubtless 
good  and  desirable  qualities  in  many  respects ;  but  these  gifts  of 
nature  may  be  extremely  bad  and  pernicious,  when  the  will  which 
makes  use  of  them  and  which  constitutes  essentially  what  is  called 
character,  is  not  itself  good. 

"  A  good  will  does  not  derive  its  goodness  from  its  effects,  from 
its  results,  nor  from  its  aptitude  to  attain  such  or  such  a  proposed 
end ;  but  simply  from  willing,  —  that  is,  from  itself ;  and,  consid- 
ered in  itself,  it  should  be  esteemed  incomparably  superior  to 
everything  that  can  be  done  by  it  to  the  advantage  of  a  few 
inclinations,  or  even  of  all  the  inclinations  combined.  Were 
adverse  fate  or  the  avarice  of  a  hard-hearted  nature  to  deprive 
this  good  will  of  all  the  means  for  executing  its  designs ;  were 
its  greatest  efforts  to  end  in  nothing,  and  were  it  to  remain 
nothing  besides  good  will,  it  would  still  shine  with  its  own  lus- 
tre like  a  precious  stone,  for  it  derives  from  itself  all  its  own 
worth." 


244  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

254.  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  WILL  IN  LIFE. — Goodwill, 
energy  in  well-doing,  is  the  only  thing  which  gives  to  life 
its  value  and  its  dignity. 

"If  you  imagine,"  says  Mr.  Blackie,  "that  you  are  to  be  much 
helped  by  books  and  reasons,  speculations  and  learned  disputa- 
tions, in  this  matter  you  are  altogether  mistaken.  Books  and 
discourses  may  indeed  awaken  and  arouse  you,  and  perhaps  hold 
up  the  sign  of  a  wise  finger-post,  to  prevent  you  from  going  astray 
at  the  first  start,  but  they  cannot  move  you  a  single  step  on  the 
road.  It  is  your  own  legs  only  that  can  perform  the  journey;  it 

is  altogether  a  matter  of  doing You  must  have  a  compass 

of  sure  direction  in  your  own  soul." 1 

In  other  terms,  man  must  find  in  himself  his  own  rule 
of  conduct  and  the  powers  necessary  .to  bring  him  into 
conformity  with  it.  The  will  is  the  essential  agent  of 
virtue.  Moreover,  it  is  not  important  merely  for  moral- 
ity of  life ;  it  is  necessary  for  happiness  and  success. 
Without  it  we  would  not  succeed  in  the  world,  triumph 
over  difficulties,  and  turn  circumstances  to  our  advantage. 
In  affairs  great  or  small,  we  have  always  need  of  the 
will.  It  is  even  an  element  in  genius,  which  Buffon  de- 
fined as  "a  long  patience."  The  inventors  and  benefac- 
tors of  humanity  have  accomplished  their  work  only  at  the 
price  of  noble  efforts  and  sturdy  perseverance.  Finally, 
at  all  steps  of  the  social  ladder,  the  will  is  the  basis  of 
the  essential  quality  of  man,  —  character.  Character,  in 
fact,  is  less  the  sum  of  our  habits  and  tastes  than  the 
possession  of  a  will  that  is  strong,  enlightened,  just,  and 
good, — capable  of  coping  with  events;  and  a  character 
thus  constituted  is  the  ideal  of  moral  education. 

1  Blackie,  op.  cit.,  p.  78. 


CHAPTER    XII. 

THE   HIGHER    SENTIMENTS;    AESTHETIC   EDUCATION; 
RELIGIOUS    EDUCATION. 

255.  THE  HIGHER  SENTIMENTS. — Moral  education  would 
not  be   complete  if  it  contemplated   only   the    culture    of 
the  affectionate  and  benevolent  emotions,  the  development 
of   the   conscience ,  and   the  progress  of  the  will   and   the 
moral  energy.      It  should  also  keep  in  view  the  culture  of 
the  higher  emotions  which  depend  equally   on    the  intelli- 
gence and  the  sensibilities,  and  in  which  are  mingled  both 
the  highest  conceptions  of  the  reason  and  the  noblest  emo- 
tions of   the   heart.     These   emotions   are   the  love  of  the 
true,   a  taste   for  the  beautiful,  the  love  of  the   good,  of 
which   we   have  already   spoken,    and  the   religious   senti- 
ment. 

256.  THE    LOVE    OF    THE  TRUE. — VERACITY. — Under 
its   humblest   form,  the    love  of  the  true  is  the  horror  of 
falsehood ;  under  its  highest  form,  it  is  the  search  for  the 
truth,  the  scientific  instinct. 

Educators  have  often  studied  the  means  of  promoting 
in  the  child  the  tendency  to  veracity,  which  Mr.  Bain  in- 
cludes, with  justice  and  benevolence,  among  the  three 
fundamental  virtues. 

The  first  and  the  best  thing  to  do  is  to  give  the  example 
of  the  most  scrupulous  veracity. 

Miss  Edgeworth  justly  condemns  the  ingenious  false- 

246 


246  THEORETICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

hoods  which  Rousseau  recommends  to  the  teachers  of 
children.  "  Sooner  or  later,"  she  says,  "children  discover 
that  they  are  deceived,  and  then  their  distrust  becomes  in- 
curable. '  Honesty  is  the  best  policy,'  must  be  the  maxim 
in  education  as  well  as  in  all  the  other  affairs  of  life." 1 

But  example  is  not  sufficient ;  other  precautions  should 
be  added.  Rousseau  has  justly  said  that  we  should  never 
tempt  the  veracity  of  the  child,  and  question  him  on  what 
he  has  an  interest  in  concealing  or  misrepresenting.  "  It 
is  better,"  says  Miss  Edgeworth,  "to  suffer  the  loss  of  a 
broken  glass  than  to  put  the  "child's  sincerity  to  a  test." 
If  through  misplaced  severity  we  provoke  a  child  to  dis- 
semble his  little  faults,  we  may  fear  that,  once  having 
entered  upon  this  course,  he  will  persevere  in  it,  and  con- 
tract the  habit  of  falsehood. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  the  child  has  freely  acknowl- 
edged his  remissness  and  blundering,  let  us  show  him 
that  we  are  satisfied  with  his  sincerity,  rather  than  pro- 
voked by  his  faults.  "The  pleasure  of  being  esteemed 
and  of  deserving  compliments,"  says  Miss  Edgeworth,  "  is 
delicious  to  children." 

If,  on  the  contrary,  the  child  is  disposed  to  lie,  show 
him,  without  scolding  him  too  much,  that  the  result  of 
his  dissimulation  is  the  loss  of  our  confidence. 

"  A  good  means  of  correction,"  says  M.  Marion,  "  is  to  make 
it  appear  that  we  have  less  faith  in  the  words  of  a  child  who  has 
been  caught  in  a  falsehood,  and  to  corroborate  what  he  alleges 
by  the  testimony  of  his  companions.  He  should  be  told,  iu  a  tone 
of  severity  and  sadness,  that  we  feel  under  the  painful  necessity 
of  not  believing  what  he  says,  and  on  the  contrary  should  impose 
implicit  confidence  in  those  of  his  companions  who  have  never 
told  a  falsehood. 

1  Practical  Education,  Chap.  VIII. 


THE   HIGHER   SENTIMENTS.  247 

"The  habit  of  falsehood  must  be  very  inveterate,  if  it  resist  a 
treatment  of  this  sort  judiciously  employed." l 

In  other  terms,  education  in  veracity  will  employ  as  in- 
struments the  other  emotions  of  the  child :  first,  his  vivid 
desire  to  be  loved  and  esteemed  by  his  parents  and  teach- 
ers, and  to  possess  their  confidence ;  later,  the  feeling  of 
personal  dignity  which  lying  abases. 

257.  THE  SEARCH  FOR  TRUTH.  —  But  this  speaking  the 
truth  which  we  know  is  not  all ;  it  is  also  necessary  to 
search  for  truth  which  we  do  not  know.  Education  has  no 
more  serious  mission  than  to  inculcate  love  of  truth  and 
to  wage  war  on  credulity  and  error.  It  will  be  assisted 
in  this  task  by  the  child's  natural  curiosity,  which,  once 
excited,  aspires  to  know  everything  and  to  comprehend 
everything.  It  is  certainly  not  proposed  to  satisfy  this 
curiosity  in  all  respects,  especially  in  the  primary  school ; 
but  if  the  child  cannot  know  all  that  is  true,  at  least  he 
should  be  taught  nothing  which  is  false. 

Education  ought  more  and  more  to  indoctrinate  Children 
with  the  scientific  spirit,  and  should  offer  to  their  belief , 
not  illusions  which  please  them,  but  truths  which  instruct 
them.  Then  let  us  habituate  the  child  to  accept  only 
opinions  which  lie  within  the  compass  of  his  thought,  and 
which  he  can  verify  for  himself.  Without  wishing  to  exer- 
cise his  critical  spirit  prematurely,  let  us  require  him  to 
express  an  opinion  only  in  earnest  and  after  reflection. 
Doubtless  it  is  not  proposed  to  make  of  him  a  little  Car- 
tesian, who  believes  nothing  which  he  cannot  prove ;  but 
so  far  as  possible  let  us  appeal  to  his  reason.  The 
pleasure  which  naturally  accompanies  the  attainment  of 
truth  will  gradually  turn  him  aside  from  blind  and  irra- 

1  M.  Marion,  Lemons  de  psychologic,  p.  196. 


248  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

tional  opinions.  He  will  come  to  love  the  truth  for  troth's 
sake ;  will  acquire  a  taste  for  knowledge ;  will  feel  the 
need  of  personal  research,  and  will  taste  the  pleasure  of 
discovery. 

258.  LOVE    OF   THE   BEAUTIFUL. — We    need   not    stop 
here  to  give  an  exact  and  rigorous  definition  of  the  beauti- 
ful.    We  leave  this  task  to  the  teachers  of  aesthetics.     For 
our  present  purpose  beauty  is  defined  chiefly  by  the  feel- 
ings  which  it  excites  in  the  mind,  by  the  charm    thrown 
about  us  by  the  productions  of  nature  and   the   works   of 
art,  by  the  admiration  with  which  they  fill  us. 

That  the  little  child  is  sensible  of  the  beautiful  is  a 
fact  which  cannot  be  disputed.  Certain  animals  even  seem 
to  have  some  vague  feeling  of  beauty.  M.  Perez  proves 
by  numerous  examples  that  even  before  the  third  year  the 
musical  instinct  and  the  instinct  of  visual  beauty  are  de- 
veloped and  manifested.  In  his  affection  for  animals,  in 
his  preferences  for  certain  persons,  and  in  his  taste  for 
pictures,  the  child  already  proves  that  he  distinguishes 
confusedly  between  what  is  beautiful  and  what  is  ugly. 
A  pretty  toy,  an  agreeable  face,  a  brilliant  flower,  attract 
him  and  please  him. 

259.  ^ESTHETIC  EDUCATION.  — A  complete  education  can- 
not    leave     these     natural    dispositions    uncultivated.      It 
should   develop  them  for  their  own   sake,  simply   because 
they  form  a  part  of  our  nature,  which  would  be  mutilated 
if  they  were  allowed  to  perish ;  and  it  should  develop  and 
cultivate  them  for  the  further  reason  that,  if  well-directed, 
they  may  have  a  happy  influence  upon  moral  education. 

A  place  must  then  be  made  for  what  might  be  called 
aesthetic  education.  In  its  widest  extent  this  education 
would  comprise  an  appreciation  of  all  the  beauties  of  na- 


THE   HIGHER   SENTIMENTS.  249 

ture  and  art,  literary  taste,  the  enjoyment  of  music,  a 
knowledge  of  the  plastic  arts,  and  also  the  various  talents 
which  permit  us  not  only  to  feel  the  beauty  there  is  in 
the  works  of  others,  but  to  realize  it  in  works  of  our 
own.  We  are  not  concerned  here  with  that  special  culture 
which  makes  critics,  artists,  and  poets  ;  but,  considered  simply 
as  an  element  in  general  education,  in  view  of  assuring 
the  happiness  and  relative  perfection  of  the  human  being, 
aesthetic  education  is  still  important ;  and  it  is  to  be  regretted 
that  in  modern  society  it  has  not  yet  obtained  the  credit 
which  it  enjoyed  among  the  ancients. 

260.  ./ESTHETIC  EDUCATION  AMONG  THE  ANCIENTS.  —  For 
making  men  moral,  the  ancients,  particularly  the  Greeks, 
counted  upon  art  even  more  than  religion.  At  Athens, 
moral  education  was  above  all  an  aesthetic  education. 
Plato  thought  that  the  soul  ascends  to  the  good  through 
the  beautiful.  "Beautiful  and  good"  are  two  words  con- 
stantly associated  by  the  Greeks. 

"  We  ought,"  says  Plato, "  to  seek  artists  who  by  the  power  of 
genius  can  trace  out  the  nature  of  the  fair  and  the  graceful,  that 
our  young  men,  dwelling  as  it  were  in  a  healthful  region,  may 
drink  in  good  from  every  quarter,  whence  any  emanation  from 
noble  works  may  strike  upon  their  eye  or  ear,  like  a  gale  wafting 
health  from  salubrious  lands,  and  win  them  imperceptibly  from 
their  earliest  years  into  resemblance,  love,  and  harmony  with  the 
true  beauty  of  reason. 

"  Is  it  not,  then,  on  these  accounts  that  we  attach  such  supreme 
importance  to  a  musical  education,  because  rhythm  and  harmony 
sink  most  deeply  into  the  recesses  of  the  soul,  bringing  graceful- 
ness in  their  train,  and  making  a  man  graceful  if  he  be  rightly 
nurtured,  —  but  if  not,  the  reverse,  —  and  also  because  he  that  has 
been  duly  nurtured  therein  will  have  the  keenest  eye  for  defects, 
whether  in  the  failures  of  art  or  in  the  misgrowths  of  nature,  and, 
feeling  a  most  just  disdain  for  them,  will  commend  beautiful 


250  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

objects,  gladly  receive  them  into  his  soul,  feed  upon  them,  and 
grow  to  be  noble  and  good ;  whereas  he  will  rightly  censure  and 
hate  all  repulsive  objects,  even  in  his  childhood,  before  he  is  able 
to  be  reasoned  with ;  and  when  reason  comes,  he  will  welcome  her 
most  cordially  who  can  recognize  her  by  instinct  of  relationship 
and  because  he  has  been  thus  nurtured  ?  " 1 

What  Plato  designates  music  would  be  called  to-day  art 
in  general ;  and  in  his  view  art  is,  so  to  speak,  a  ladder  of 
virtue,  a  preparation  for  the  life  of  the  reason. 

The  ancients  were  always  inclined  not  to  isolate  moral- 
ity, but  to  confound  it,  now  with  the  search  for  the  true, 
and  now  with  the  love  of  the  good.  While  Socrates  af- 
firmed that  the  good  and  the  true  are  the  same  thing, 
the  Stoics  proclaimed  the  identity  of  beauty  and  virtue. 

261.  THE  ARTS  AND  MORALS.  —  In  fact,  there  are  inti- 
mate relations  between  the  arts  and  morals. 

"  Art  should  be  taught  a  child,"  says  M.  Marion,  "  because  it 
has  an  incomparable  educating  power.  The  beautiful  is  essentially 
order  and  harmony.  From  the  imagination  and  the  mind,  that 
order  and  harmony  pass  into  the  heart  and  soon  manifest  them- 
selves outwardly  by  elegance  and  grace ;  a  just  proportion  is  ob- 
served in  the  movements,  and  finally  it  reappears  in  the  acts. 
Good  taste  easily  takes  the  form  of  self-respect.  Is  it  not  a  com- 
monplace to  say  that  art  softens  public  and  private  manners  ? 
There  are  faults  and  moral  tendencies,  the  idea  of  which  a  mind 
accustomed  to  live  in  companionship  with  the  beautiful  can 
neither  conceive  nor  abide."2 

Evil,  in  fact,  is  an  ugly  thing ;  and  the  delicacy  of  a 
soul  sensitive  to  beauty  is  offended  at  it  and  spurns  it. 
And  if  we  make  a  minute  study  of  the  different  beauties 

1  Republic,  pp.  401,  402. 

2  M.  Marion,  Le$ ons  de  psychologic,  p.  200. 


THE    HIGHEE   SENTIMENTS.  251 

which  art  and  nature  have  contrived  for  charming  and 
ennobling  life,  the  moral  influence  of  the  beautiful  appears 
still  more  striking.  The  spectacles  of  nature  allay  the 
passions  and  envelop  us  in  their  purity  and  innocence. 
The  plastic  arts  at  the  very  least  reveal  and  communicate 
to  us  the  grace  and  elegance  of  the  bodily  movements. 
Music,  the  most  impressive  of  the  arts,  to  which  the  ancients 
attributed  a  preponderant  part  in  moral  education,  trans- 
mits to  the  soul  a  certain  contagion  of  order  and  har- 
mony. Finally,  poetry  exalts  and  enchants  us  by  its 
more  formal  inspirations ;  it  moves  us  with  admiration  for 
all  the  beautiful  deeds  which  it  celebrates,  and  which  it 
proposes  as  models  to  the  enthusiasm  that  it  excites 
within  us. 

262.  THE  ARTS  AS  A  SOURCE  OF  PLEASURE. — The  arts 
are  not  merely  an  element  of  moral  culture,  but  deserve 
to  be  recommended  also  as  the  source  of  some  of  the 
sweetest,  keenest,  and  also  the  most  elevated  emotions 
which  human  nature  can  enjoy.  It  is  not  possible  to  cut 
off  man  from  pleasure ;  so  let  us  try  to  have  him  seek  it 
and  find  it  in  the  pure  enjoyments  of  art. 

"We  should  recognize  in  the  art  emotions,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "a 
means  of  pleasure  as  such,  a  pure  hedonic  factor;  in  which 
capacity  they  are  a  final  end.  Their  function  in  intellectual 
education  is  the  function  of  all  pleasure  when  not  too  great; 
namely,  to  cheer,  refresh,  and  encourage  us  in  our  work." l 

The  artistic  pleasures,  in  fact,  have  no  disturbing  or 
corrupting  effect ;  they  calm  and  pacify  the  soul.  Far 
from  turning  it  aside  from  serious  studies,  they  incline  it 
towards  them ;  they  compromise  neither  the  delicacy  of 
the  emotions  nor  the  strength  of  the  reason.  They  oc- 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  pp.  90,  97. 


252  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

cupy,  better  than  any  other  diversion  can,  our  hours  of 
leisure,  the  intervals  of  active  life ;  and  when  we  leave 
them,  we  resume  without  effort  and  without  disturbance 
the  labors  and  obligations  of  our  profession  or  trade.  To 
those  who  might  be  tempted  to  deny  the  moral  influence 
of  art,  and  who  might  not  comprehend  what  power  it  has 
to  purify  and  ennoble  the  soul,  we  would  reply  further 
that  the  aesthetic  sentiments  are  good  in  themselves ;  that 
they  bring  us  exquisite,  salutary,  and  wholesome  joys ; 
and  that  they  are  also  good  because  they  replace  other 
emotions,  and  are  substitutes  for  inferior  pleasures  of  a 
purely  material  order,  where  morals  are  destroyed  and 
the  heart  debased.  "If  we  regard  education  as  a  means 
of  making  men  happy,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "it  ought  cer- 
tainly to  comprise  a  knowledge  of  the  arts." 

263.  TESTIMONY  OF  STUART  MILL.  —  In  general,  the 
most  scientific  minds,  those  most  enamored  of  the  truth, 
do  not  remain  insensible  to  the  charm  of  the  arts.  Thus, 
in  his  Memoirs,  Stuart  Mill  relates  that  his  early  educa- 
tion, under  the  direction  of  an  austere  father,  had  been 
entirely  devoted  to  abstract  reflection,  to  logic,  and  to 
science.  At  three  years  of  age  he  knew  Greek ;  at 
twelve,  he  was  a  logician ;  at  thirteen,  he  learned  the  in- 
tegral calculus.  What  resulted  from  this  exclusively  intel- 
lectual education,  from  this  inordinate  instruction?  During 
his  years  of  adolescence  he  was  seized  with  a  profound 
sadness,  a  real  disgust  for  life.  At  the  age  of  twenty 
he  was  beset  each  day  for  a  winter  by  a  wish  to  drown 
himself.  But  a  book  of  poems  fell  into  his  hands ;  he 
formed  a  taste  for  music ;  and  he  was  saved,  consoled  by 
emotion.  He  then  comprehended  the  importance  of  the 
first  emotions  and  sentiments  which  attach  us  to  life,  by 
embellishing  it  with  their  charms. 


THE   HIGHER   SENTIMENTS.  *     253 

264.  THE  ARTS  IN  THE  COMMON  SCHOOL.  —  As  yet  the 
arts  have  had  too  little  influence  upon  popular   education. 
The  child  has  so  little  time  to  devote  to  his   instruction ; 
he  must  in  five  or  six  years  learn  so  many  things  for  im- 
mediate   use,  must  acquire  so  much  practical   knowledge, 
that  we  hesitate  to  impose  on  him  this  new  burden  which 
comes  from  even  an  elementary  study  of  the  arts. 

And  yet  it  is  very  desirable  that  popular  education 
should  not  be  exclusively  subordinate  to  the  pursuit  of 
material  interests,  and  that  there  should  be  reserved  a 
place,  the  widest  possible,  for  the  disinterested  culture  of 
taste  and  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful. 

"  Would  not  the  laboring  man,"  says  M.  Ravaisson  eloquently, 
"  upon  whom  hard  necessity  imposes  so  heavy  a  weight,  find  the 
best  alleviation  for  his  hard  condition,  if  his  eyes  were  opened  to 
what  Leonardo  da  Vinci  calls  la  bellezza  del  mondo;  if  he  also 
were  thus  called  to  enjoy  the  sight  of  those  graces  which  we  see 
scattered  over  this  vast  world,  and  which,  made  sensible  to  the 
heart,  according  to  Pascal's  expression,  soothe  more  than  anything 
else  his  sadness,  and  more  than  anything  else  give  him  the  pre- 
sentiment and  the  foretaste  of  a  better  destiny?" 

265.  LOVE   FOR  THE   BEAUTIFUL,   HOW    CULTIVATED. — 
From    the   child's  earliest  years  he  should  be   accustomed 
to  inhale,  so  to  speak,   the  beauties  which  surround   him. 
Even  in   the  country,  where  works  of  art  are  lacking,  the 
pretty,  beautiful,  or  sublime  things  presented  by  the  spec- 
tacle  of  nature   will  suffice  for  this   primary  education  in 
aesthetics.      Later,   the  field-laborer  will  feel   sustained   in 
his  rude  toil  by  the  love  with  which  he  has  been  inspired 
for  rural  beauty. 

"  Very  early  the  child  should  be  made  sensible  to  the  beauties 
of  trees,  flowers,  birds,  insects,  and  all  those  marvels  which  lit; 
might  perhaps  pass  by  without  seeing;  he  must  be  led  to 


254  *  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

the    pure  source    of    the    disinterested    enjoyments    of  admira- 
tion." * 

"  For  the  language  of  the  imagination,"  said  Madame  Necker 
de  Saussure  to  the  same  effect,  "  the  first  vocabulary  is  to  be  found 
in  nature." 

Says  Herder  also,  "  It  is  a  proof  of  the  profound  barbarism  in 
which  we  bring  up  our  children,  that  we  neglect  to  give  them, 
from  their  earliest  years,  a  profound  impression  of  the  beauty, 
harmony,  and  variety  which  our  earth  presents."  8 

266.  INDIRECT  MEANS. — At  school  even  the  decoration 
of  the  class-room,  the  simple  ornaments  with  which  it  is 
embellished,  the  pictures  which  adorn  its  walls,  and  the 
illustrations  in  the  text-books,  will  be  so  many  indirect 
means  for  preparing  the  child  to  enjoy  whatever  is  beauti- 
ful. It  is  not  possible  to  expect  that  the  child  in  our 
school  shall  live,  like  the  little  Athenian,  among  the 
masterpieces  of  art,  and,  so  to  speak,  in  the  midst  of  a 
world  of  statues.  At  least,  so"  far  as  possible,  he  should 
be  surrounded  by  objects  which  do  not  shock  his  taste ; 
and  even  in  his  toys  everything  that  is  ugly  or  repulsive, 
everything  that  is  of  a  nature  to  produce  bad  habits  of 
hearing  and  seeing,  should  be  avoided.3  The  treasures  of 
art  should  also  be  opened  to  him  by  visits  to  museums 
and  libraries. 

1  Mile.  Chalamet,  VEcole  maternelle,  p.  150. 

2  Herder,  Idees,  II.,  Chap.  IV. 

8  An  elegant  and.  judicious  writer,  M.  Rigault,  strongly  insists 
on  the  disadvantages  presented  by  the  first  playthings  if  they  chance 
to  be  ugly. 

"Why  is  it  that  almost  always  there  is  made  of  the  rattle,  of 
that  old  man  in  metal  which  is  the  first  plaything  of  the  child,  a 
deformed  creature,  hump-backed,  with  inordinate  mouth  and  a  hooked 
nose  reaching  to  the  chin1?  The  first  imitation  of  nature  which 
strikes  the  eyes  of  the  child  is  the  figure  of  a  monster.  He  is  intro- 


THE    HIGHER   SENTIMENTS.  -  255 

267.  SPECIAL  EXERCISES. — But  to  these  indirect  means 
there   must   be   added   special   exercises.      These    studies, 
however,  should  remain  very  elementary. 

"  The  school,"  says  M.  Rendu,  "  ought  to  make  neither  mechan- 
ists, agriculturists,  surveyors,  nor  gymnasts ;  and  no  more  should 
it  make  musicians.  The  school  initiates  the  child  into  the  sciences 
he  will  need  when  he  becomes  a  man  ;  it  makes  a  rough  draft,  but 
does  not  complete  the  picture."  * 

M.  Ravaisson,  in  the  remarkable  article  to  which  we 
have  already  referred,  gives  his  preference  to  drawing, 
and  to  the  drawing  of  the  human  figure.  But  perhaps  for 
the  pupils  of  the  common  school,  for  the  workmen  of  the 
future,  ornamental  and  geometrical  drawing  may  be  more 
useful,  and  may  prepare  them  better  for  the  vocations 
which  will  occupy  their  lives. 

268.  CULTURE    OF   THE   TASTE.  — An  elementary  educa- 
tion  in   aesthetics   ought  to  develop  the   taste,  rather  than 
talent   for   execution ;  .not  that  refined   and   purely   critical 
taste,  which  simply  spies  out  defects  in  works  of  art,  and 
which  is  of  advantage  only  to  specialists ;    but  that  cath- 
olic  and  beneficent    taste   which  borders    on    enthusiasm, 
which   is  interested  in   all  forms  of   beauty,  which  is  dis- 
played not  merely  in  the  appreciation  of  literary  qualities, 
but  in  the  enjoyment  of  all  the  arts. 

duced  to  art  through  the  medium  of  the  ugly.  But  this  is  not  all ; 
the  body  of  this  knock-kneed,  hump-backed  fellow  is  provided  with 
a  shrill  whistle,  the  sound  of  which  tortures  the  nascent  hearing  of 
the  child.  This  is  intended,  it  is  said,  to  divert  him.  Here  is  the 
first  idea  given  to  him  of  music,  —  his  entrance  on  life  is  greeted  by 
a  false  note.  I  am  persuaded  that  each  year  in  our  country  the 
education  of  the  child  by  this  wretched  toy  destroys  in  germ  a  host 
of  painters  and  musicians."  (CEuvres  completes,  IV.  p.  276.) 
1  Manuel  de  I'enseignement  primaire. 


256  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  Only  a  few  are  artists,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "  and  the  rest  enjoy  the 

works  produced  by  these Without  being  able  to  perform, 

one  may  acquire  a  taste  for  music  by  listening  to  performances. 
....  The  group  of  arts  addressed  to  the  eye, — painting,  design, 
sculpture,  architecture,  —  are  the  enjoyment  of  many;  but  their 
production  is  confined  to  a  few.  .  .  .  Every  literary  teacher  con- 
tributes to  the  poetic  taste,  both  as  enjoyment  and  as  discrimina- 
tion." 1 

Without  doubt  it  is  literary  and  poetic  taste  that  it  is 
easiest  to  develop,  because,  first,  the  masterpieces  in  this 
line  are  more  numerous  than  in  any  other,  and  then  for 
the  reason  that  models  of  literary  art  are  within  the 
reach  of  all,  and  it  is  not  necessary,  in  order  to  enjoy 
them,  to  force  the  doors  of  a  museum. 

269.  ART  AS  A  MORALIZER. — We  cannot  repeat  too 
often  that  aesthetic  culture  concerns  us  less  as  a  disinter- 
ested education  of  the  artistic  faculties  than  as  an  ally  in 
moral  education.  It  is  this  function  of  art  which  a  con- 
temporary moralist  has  placed  in  sharp  relief  in  the  fol- 
lowing extract : 

"  We  know  the  system  of  those  fathers,  mothers,  and  teachers 
who  imagine  that  in  education  scoldings  alone  are  efficacious, 
and  that  we  form  and  mould  the  soul  only  by  the  use  of  maxims. 
In  this  sort  of  instruction,  or  rather  regime,  if  the  maxims  are  of 
a  nature  not  to  be  easily  swallowed,  it  is  thought  best  to  resort 
to  a  wholesome  deception ;  the  remedy  is  diluted  in  a  fable,  so 
that  the  patient  may  take  it  without  suspecting  what  it  is,  in 
imitation  of  that  physician  of  antiquity,  who,  not  able  to  make 
his  patient  take  a  bitter  herb,  bethought  himself  to  have  a  goat 
fed  on  it,  so  that  the  milk,  thus  impregnated  with  the  medicinal 
virtue,  might  restore  the  deceived  invalid  to  health.  In  this  way 
a  thousand  sly  and  insidious  ways  are  taken  to  infuse  the  precepts 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  Chap.  XIII. 


THE   HIGHER   SENTIMENTS.  257 

of  morality.  Is  not  this  to  say  in  effect  that  honesty  is  a  frightful 
and  disagreeable  thing,  which  must  be  persistently  sweetened  and 
adulterated  in  order  to  make  it  palatable  ?  Even  supposing  this 
education  to  be  good,  is  it  the  only  one?  Is  it  not  likely  that 
children  will  be  more  profited  by  living  with  an  honorable  man 
who  lives  nobly,  who  expresses  only  noble  sentiments,  who  by  his 
discourse  and  his  example  spreads  around  him  a  beneficent  in- 
fluence, without  ever  resorting  to  the  language  of  the  moralities? 
It  may  be  said  that  in  society  art  resembles  a  noble  man.  If  it 
is  what  it  ought  to  be,  if  it  is  grand  and  pure  and  delicate,  it 
instructs  and  purifies  by  its  very  delicacy,  it  teaches  by  its  very 
presence."  l 

27 Q.  EXCESSES  TO  BE  AVOIDED. — But  whatever  may 
be  said  of  the  educative  virtue  of  art,  we  must  neverthe- 
less be  on  our  guard  against  exaggeration,  and  oppose 
those  who  say  that  beauty  is  the  secret  of  education,  just 
as  beauty  is  the  secret  of  the  universe.  No ;  unfortu- 
nately, the  real  education  of  man  cannot  be  content  with 
the  gracious  and  vague  inspirations  of  art ;  the  child  can- 
not thrive  on  hymns  and  sonnets,  in  hymnis  et  canticis; 
we  might  just  as  well  say  that  he  ought  to  be  brought 
up  in  games  and  a  perpetual  recreation.  ./Esthetic  pleas- 
ures may  indeed  be  pure  and  elevated  pleasures,  but 
after  all  they  are  but  pleasures ;  they  share  the  nature  of 
emotions,  and  the  emotions  cannot  be  the  rule  of  life. 

The  abuse  of  the  aesthetic  emotions  enervates  and  en- 
feebles the  soul,  and  makes  minds  so  extremely  delicate 
as  to  be  unable  to  confront  with  courage  the  unpleasant 
things  of  real  life.  "The  delicate  are  unhappy,"  said  La 
Fontaine ;  and  he  meant  by  this  that  the  delicate  have 
not  force  enough  to  resist  the  trials  of  life,  to  surmount 
its  difficulties  and  obstacles.  Let  us  plant  in  the  heart  a 

1  M.  Martha,  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  April  15,  1870. 


258  THEORETICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

noble  aspiration  after  the  ideal ;  but  let  us  not  forget 
that  life  is  made  up  of  realities,  that  existence  does  not  at 
all  resemble  a  pleasing  poem,  interspersed  with  songs,  in 
which  we  have  but  to  follow  the  seducing  lead  of  the 
pleasures  of  taste.  There  are  efforts  to  make,  struggles 
to  sustain,  miseries  to  fight ;  and  to  prepare  man  for  the 
combats  of  life  there  must  be  a  virile  apprenticeship ;  we 
must  develop  the  reason  still  more  than  the  imagination, 
and  must  cultivate  science  more  than  art  and  poetry. 

271.  THE  RELIGIOUS  SENTIMENT.  —  Whatever  may  be 
the  importance  of  the  religious  sentiment  in  life,  we  shall 
make  but  brief  mention  of  it  here,  since  this  sentiment  is 
especially  connected  with  doctrines  and  confessional  be- 
liefs, with  which  the  philosophy  of  education  cannot 
concern  itself. 

While  in  England  and  elsewhere,  "  the  schoolmaster  of 
the  primary  school  is  expected  to  be  an  instructor  in  re- 
ligion, both  in  its  own  proper  character  and  as  a  support 
of  the  highest  morality,"  we  have  in  France  preferred  to 
separate  the  school  from  the  church,  and  to  leave  to  the 
ministers  of  the  different  sects  the  duty  of  catechizing 
children. 

Is  this  saying  that  everything  relating  to  religious  edu- 
cation ought  to  be  discarded  from  instruction  proper? 
Certainly  not.  Apart  from  forms  and  rites  and  particu- 
lar dogmas,  there  is  a  natural  aspiration  of  man  towards 
religion,  —  that  is,  according  to  the  definition  which  M. 
Marion  gives  of  it,  ' '  towards  a  body  of  beliefs  which 
surpass  positive  knowledge,  and  which  relate  to  man's 
place  in  nature,  as  well  as  to  his  destiny."  1 

In  our  opinion  the  part  of  the  educator  will  be  mainly 

1  La  Reform  universitaire, 


THE   HIGHER   SENTIMENTS.  259 

negative  in  such  cases ;  I  mean  that  he  ought  scrupulously 
to  respect  all  the  beliefs  of  the  child,  and  to  say  noth- 
ing and  do  nothing  which  may  wound  the  religious 
feelings  which  have  been  inculcated  in  him  by  his  parents 
or  his  ecclesiastical  teachers.  But  must  anything  beyond 
this  be  done  ?  Must  the  instructor  depart  from  this  atti- 
tude of  deference  and  respect,  to  intervene  directly  and 
actively  in  the  culture  of  the  religious  sentiment? 
Many  great  and  good  men  do  not  hesitate  to  reply  in 
the  affirmative. 

272.  RELIGIOUS  EDUCATION  IN  THE  COMMON  SCHOOLS.  — 
M.  Paul  Janet  has  clearly  defined  the  proper  sphere  of  relig- 
ious education  in  moral  instruction.  He  speaks  as  follows  : 

"  The  natural  coronation  of  moral  instruction  in  the  common 
school  will  be  the  knowledge  of  God.  Children  will  be  taught 
that  life  has  a  serious  purpose,  that  men  are  not  the  product  of 
chance,  that  a  wise  thought  watches  over  the  universe,  and  that 
a  vigilant  eye  penetrates  all  hearts. 

It  will  pertain  to  the  particular  sects  to  teach  and  prescribe 
regular  exercises  in  traditional  form.  Special  effort  will  be  made 
to  awaken  in  souls  the  religious  sentiment ;  they  will  be  made  to 
comprehend  that  the  feeling  and  thought  of  God  may  be  asso- 
ciated with  all  the  acts  of  life,  and  that  every  action  may  be  at 
the  same  time  moral  and  religious,  so  far  as  it  is  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  will  of  Providence.  Qui  travaille  prie,  says  the  proverb. 
A  life  which  strives  to  preserve  itself  pure  and  virtuous  is  a  con- 
tinual prayer.  As  to  stated  prayer  in  a  particular  form,  it  is 
within  the  domain  of  positive  religion.  It  seems  to  us  that  this 
way  of  interpreting  one's  duties  towards  God  can  offend  no  one, 
for  the  state  does  not  undertake  to  assert  that  a  purely  subjective 
piety  is  sufficient,  and*  it  leaves  the  different  sects  to  show  that 
it  is  not.  Those  who  think  in  this  way  will  feel  only  the  more 
authorized  to  require  parents  to  complete  the  religious  education 
of  their  children  by  the  instruction  of  the  church."  l 

1  Rapport,  U  la  section  permanent  du  Conseil  Sup^rieur,  20  juin,  1882. 


260  THEORETICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

273.  MORALS  AND  RELIGION.  — In  speaking  thus,  M. 
Janet  is  inspired  by  some  of  the  greatest  masters  of 
modern  pedagogy,  especially  by  Eousseau  and  Kant. 

For  Kant,  morals  and  religion  are  inseparable ;  and 
between  them  are  intimate  relations.  But  the  German 
philosopher  understands  these  relations  as  follows  :  "In  his 
view,  morals  is  the  base  and  source  of  religion ;  it  is  re- 
ligion which  is  the  consequence  of  morals.  It  is  because 
one  first  believes  in  duty  imperiously  revealed  by  con- 
science, that  he  afterwards  rises  to  the  conception  of 
God  and  to  the  hope  of  an  immortal  destiny."  l 

"  Religion,"  he  says,  "  is  the  law  which  resides  within  us,  so  far 
as  it  derives  its  authority  from  a  supreme  legislator  and  judge ;  it 
is  morals  applied  to  the  knowledge  of  God.  When  religion  is  not 
united  to  morality,  it  is  no  more  than  a  manner  of  soliciting  the 
favor  of  heaven.  Songs,  prayer,  attendance  at  church,  ought  to 
serve  only  to  give  man  new  strength  and  new  courage  to  work  for 
his  amelioration ;  they  should  be  but  the  expression  of  a  heart 
animated  by  the  idea  of  duty.  They  are  but  preparations  for  good 
works,  but  not  themselves  good  works,  and  one  cannot  please  God 
except  by  becoming  better.  .  .  .  The  beginning  must  not  be  made 
in  theology.  Religion  which  is  founded  solely  on  theology  has  no 
moral  element.  It  will  embody  no  feelings  save  the  fear  of 
punishment  on  the  one  hand  and  on  the  other  the  hope  of  reward, 
that  which  will  produce  only  a  superstitious  creed.  Morality  must 
then  precede  and  theology  follow;  and  this  is  what  is  called 
religion." 

In  other  terms,  God  ought  to  appear  in  the  conscious- 
ness only  behind  duty.  From  the  idea  of  law  we  rise  to 
the  idea  of  the  lawgiver.  The  reproaches  of  the  con- 
science are  as  the  ambassadors  of  God  in  our  soul. 

However  difficult  the  course  we  have  just  indicated  may 
be  for  the  intelligence  of  the  child,  we  are  convinced  that 

1  Kant,  Pfdagogie,  p.  243. 


THE   HIGHER   SENTIMENTS.  261 

it  is  the  only  one  which  is  admissible  in  lay  teaching,  in 
universal  instruction.  Let  us  not  introduce  the  child  into 
religious  controversies ;  let  us  be  temperate  on  all  those 
questions  which  divide  men,  and  in  which  absolute  clear- 
ness has  not  been  attained.  Religion  is  nothing  if  it  is  but 
a  series  of  formulas  learned  by  heart  and  imposed  by  force. 
Let  us  respect  the  liberty  of  the  child,  let  us  in  no  re- 
spect restrain  his  soaring  towards  the  ideal,  towards  the 
infinite ;  but  let  us  not  constrain  him  by  obliging  him  to 
believe  what  he  does  not  comprehend.  Let  us  aim  chiefly 
at  morals ;  let  us  build  moral  principles  on  such  solid 
foundations  that  in  a  crisis  which  might  carry  away  re- 
ligious beliefs,  the  belief  in  duty  would  not  disappear 
with  them. 


PART    SECOND. 


PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 


CHAPTER    I. 

METHODS    IN    GENERAL. 

274.  PRACTICAL  PEDAGOGY. — Practical  pedagogy  is  but 
the  application   of   the  general   rules    established   in   theo- 
retical pedagogy.     After  having  studied  the  different  facul- 
ties by  themselves,  both  in  their  natural  development  and  in 
their  school  training,  it  is  proposed  to  examine  by  the  light 
of   these   established   principles    the   different  parts  of  the 
course  of  study  and  the  principal  questions  of   discipline. 
In  other   terms,  from   the   subject  of   education,  the   child, 
we   now   pass  to   the   object  of   education ;  that   is,  to   the 
methods  of  teaching  and  to  the   rules  of  school  adminis- 
tration. 

275.  METHOD  IN  GENERAL.  —  Method  in  general  is  the 
order   which  we   voluntarily   introduce   into  our    thoughts, 
our  acts,    and   our    undertakings.1     To    act    methodically 
is    the    contrary   of   acting   thoughtlessly,    inconsiderately, 
without   continuity  and  without  plan.      Port  Royal   justly 
defined  method  as   "the  art  of  rightly  arranging  a  series 
of   several   thoughts." 

Understood  in  this  liberal  sense,  method  is  applicable  to 

1  M.  Rousselot  defines  method  as  the  straightest  and  surest  route 
for  the  discovery  of  truth,  or  for  the  communication  of  it  when  it 
has  been  discovered.  This  definition  is  not  satisfactory,  because 
it  omits  the  element  which  is  absolutely  essential  to  the  meaning 
of  the  word.  Method  implies  calculation,  reflection,  will. 

265 


266  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

all  the  parts  of  education  as  to  all  the  undertakings  of 
man.  The  first  duty  of  a  teacher  is,  not  to  proceed  at 
random,  not  to  count  upon  the  inspiration  of  the  moment 
and  upon  the  good  fortune  of  improvised  effort,  but 
always  to  be  guided  by  principles  deliberately  chosen,  ac- 
cording to  fixed  rules  and  in  a  premeditated  order.  The 
lack  of  method  is  the  ruin  of  education.  There  is  noth- 
ing to  be  expected  from  a  discipline  which  is  hesitating 
and  groping ;  from  instruction  which  remains  incoherent 
and  disorderly,  which  fluctuates  at  the  mercy  of  circum- 
stances and  occasions,  and  which,  being  wholly  unpre- 
meditated,' allows  itself  to  be  taken  at  unawares. 

276.  METHODS  OF  INSTRUCTION.  —  In  a  more  precise 
and  particular  sense,  method  designates  a  whole  body  of 
rational  processes,  of  rules,  of  means  which  are  practiced 
and  followed  in  the  accomplishment  of  any  undertaking. 
Just  as  for  the  discovery  of  truth  there  are  methods 
which  logic  prescribes,  there  will  also  be,  for  the  communi- 
cation and  teaching  of  truth,  other  methods,  the  study 
of  which  constitutes  practical  pedagogy. 

Methods  will  vary  with  the  nature  of  the  subjects  to  be 
taught.  Geography  will  be  taught  differently  from  gram- 
mar, and  mathematics  differently  from  physics.  They 
will  also  vary  with  the  age  of  the  child.  It  is  not  possi- 
ble to  present  history  to  the  pupils  of  a  primary  school 
in  the  same  form  as  to  the  pupils  of  a  high  school.  Con- 
sequently methods  will  vary  with  the  different  grades  of 
instruction.  They  will  be  one  thing  in  a  primary  school 
and  another  in  a  normal  school ;  one  thing  in  general 
primary  instruction,  and  another  thing  in  secondary  in- 
struction. 

In  other  terms,  methods  of  instruction  should  always 
conform  to  these  three  general  principles:  1,  the  special 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  267 

characteristics  of  the  branches  of  knowledge  communi- 
cated to  the  child ;  2,  the  laws  of  mental  evolution  at 
different  periods  of  life ;  3,  the  particular  purpose  and  the 
scope  of  each  grade  of  instruction. 

277.  METHODOLOGY,    so  CALLED.  —  The   study  of   meth- 
ods of  instruction  constitutes  one   of  the    most  important 
divisions   of   educational   science.      To    give   it    a    name, 
foreign     educators     have    borrowed    from    philosophy   the 
stately  term  methodology.    Others  have  called  it  didactics, 
or  the  art  of  teaching.      M.  Daguet  ventures   the   desig- 
nation  methodics.1 

Special  works  have  been  devoted  to  methodology,  which 
itself  is  subdivided,  and  comprises  several  parts.  In 
Belgium  and  in  Switzerland  the  professors  of  pedagogy 
distinguish  general  methodology,  which  treats  of  the 
principles  common  to  all  method,  from  special  methodol- 
ogy, which  examines  in  succession  the  different  branches 
of  instruction,  and  searches  for  the  best  means  to  be  em- 
ployed in  each  science  and  in  each  study.  It  is  a  distinc- 
tion analogous  to  that  which  is  found  in  treatises  on 
Logic,  where  we  study  general  method,  applicable  to  all 
the  sciences,  before  devoting  special  chapters  to  the 
method  peculiar  to  each  science. 

278.  UTILITY    OF   METHODS.  —  Educators    are    very    far 
from  having  come  to  an  understanding  as   to    the    utility 
of   methods   and   the   necessity   of  studying  them.      Some 
are  disposed  to  accord  everything  to  methods,  and  others 
nothing   or  almost   nothing. 

Methods,  according  to  Talleyrand,  are  the  masters' 
masters.  "  The  true  instruments  of  the  sciences,  they 

1  M.  Daguet,  Manuel  de  Ptfdagogie,  Neuchatel,  1881,  p.  120. 


268  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

are    to    teachers    themselves   what    teachers   are    to    their 
pupils."  * 

Pestalozzi,  who  however  lacked  method,  and  assures  us 
that  ' '  he  proceeded  in  his  instruction  without  knowing 
what  he  did,  guided  only  by  very  obscure  but  very  vivid 
feeling,"-  — Pestalozzi  put  a  very  high  estimate  on  those 
systematic  rules  which  he  had  not  sufficient  reflective 
power  to  impose  upon  himself.  At  certain  moments  he 
pushes  to  fanaticism,  even  to  superstition,  his  enthusi- 
asm for  methods,  precisely  because  he  was  most  lacking 
in  them.  He  disowned  himself,  his  own  qualities  of 
inspiration  and  feeling,  and  his  ever-active  and  ever- 
vivifying  personality  when  he  pronounced  these  strange 
words  : 

"  I  believe  that  we  must  not  think  of  making,  in  general,  the 
least  progress  in  the  instruction  of  the  people,  as  long  as  we  have 
not  found  modes  of  teaching  which  make  of  the  instructor,  at 
least  so  far  as  the  elementary  studies  are  concerned,  the  simple 
mechanical  instrument  of  a  method  which  owes  its  results  to  the 
nature  of  its  processes,  and  not  to  the  skill  of  him  who  employs  it, 
I  affirm  that  a  school-book  has  no  value,  except  so  far  as  it  can 
be  employed  by  a  teacher  without  instruction,  as  well  as  by  one 
who  is  instructed."  2 

It  is  not  proposed  to  make  of  the  instructor  an  autom- 
aton, and  of  method  a  mechanism  which  is  a  substitute 
for  the  intelligence  and  the  personal  qualities  of  the 
teacher.  If  we  recommend  the  study  of  methods,  it  is 

1  "  The  purpose  of  methods  is  to  conduct  teachers  in  the  true 
paths,  to  simplify  and  abridge  for  them  the  difficult  road  of  instruc- 
tion.   They  are  not  necessary  alone  to  common  minds ;   the  most 
creative  genius  itself  receives  incalculable  aid  from  them."    (Rapport 
a  I' Assemble  constituante.) 

2  How  Gertrude  teaches  her  Children. 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  269 

for  the  especial  purpose  of  driving  from  instruction 
routine  and  questionable  tradition,  and  not  of  introducing 
into  it,  under  another  form,  a  sort  of  learned  mechanism. 
Methods  are  instruments ;  but  instruments,  however  per- 
fect they  may  be,  owe  their  whole  value  to  the  skill  of 
the  hand  that  employs  them.  To  the  paradox  of  Pesta- 
lozzi  we  oppose  the  wisdom  of  the  ages,  and  the  proverb 
which  says,  "As  is  the  master  so  is  the  method."  Let 
us  also  bear  in  mind -that  methods  are  not  unchangeable 
regulations,  despotic  and  irrevocable  laws ;  it  rests  with 
the  initiative  of  the  teacher  to  modify  them  according  to 
the  results  of  his  own  experience  and  the  suggestions'  of 
his  own  mind.  "  Methods,"  as  Madame  Necker  de  Saussure 
says,  "ought  to  be  in  a  state  of  perpetual  improvement." 
Thus  understood,  not  as  laws  slavishly  accepted  with 
a  superstitious  respect,  but  as  instruments  which  are  to 
be  handled  with  freedom,  methods,  no  one  will  deny, 
may  render  important  services. 

"  Method,"  says  M.  Marion,  "  is  a  necessary  condition  of  success, 
and,  with  respect  to  efficiency  of  service,  it  puts,  as  it  were,  an 
abyss  between  men  of  equal  good  intent.  Descartes  went  so  far 
as  to  say  that,  apparently  equally  as  to  intellectual  endowments, 
men  differ  not  so  much  by  the  power  they  have  in  searching  for 
truth,  as  in  the  method  which  they  employ.  The  truth  is  that  in 
every  kind  of  practical  work,  other  things  being  equal,  he  who 
proceeds  rationally  has  at  least  three  great  advantages  over  him 
who  lives  on  expedients,  from  hand  to  mouth.  Starting  with  a 
fixed  purpose,  he  runs  less  risk  of  losing  sight  of  it  and  of  missing 
his  way.  Having  reflected  on  the  means  at  his  command,  he  has 
more  chances  of  omitting  none  of  them  and  of  always  choosing 
the  best.  Finally,  sure  both  of  the  end  in  view  and  of  the  means 
of  attaining  it,  it  depends  only  on  himself  to  reach  it  as  soon  as 
possible.  '  A  lame  man  on  a  straight  road,'  said  Bacon,  '  reaches 
his  destination  sooner  than  a  courier  who  misses  his  way.' "  * 

1  M.  Marion,  article  M&hode,  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  Ptdagogie. 


270  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

279.  ABUSE  OP  THE  STUDY  OF  METHODS.  —  But,  con- 
vinced as  we  are  of  the  utility  of- methods,  we  do  not 
think  that  it  is  necessary  to  pause  to  study  the  abstract 
generalities  which  dominate  them.  If  this  point  is  not 
guarded,  the  educators  of  our  day  will  proceed  to  con- 
struct a  sort  of  new  scholastic,  all  bristling  with  learned 
formulas ,  subtile  divisions,  and  pedantic  terms.  They 
will  succeed  in  making  of  a  very  simple  study,  one  wholly 
practical,  a  logic  of  a  new  kind  and  of  a  truly  frightful 
aspect,  in  which  fine  words  succeed  fine  words,  and  in 
which  the  real  things  are  forgotten.  Let  us  distrust  the 
formalism  which  is  always  ready  to  set  up  its  claims, 
because  it  is  easier  to  inscribe  words  on  paper  than  to 
awaken  emotions  in  the  heart  or  to  enrich  the  mind  with 
positive  notions. 

Open  one  of  those  manuals  of  pedagogy  which  are  so 
very  popular  in  Belgium  and  Germany.  You  will  there 
find  interminable  pages  devoted  to  the  distinction  between 
principles,  modes,  forms,  processes,  and  methods  of  instruc- 
tion.1 You  will  there  see  crowded  tables  which  contain 
no  less  than  eight  forms  of  instruction :  the  acromatic 
form,  or  that  of  uninterrupted  exposition,  the  erotematic, 
or  that  of  interrupted  exposition,  which  contains  no  less 
than  seven  other  distinct  forms,  as  the  catechetic,  socratic, 
heuristic,  repetitive,  examinative,  analytic  and  synthetic, 
and  the  paralogic.  As  if  this  were  not  enough,  there  fol- 
lows a  subdivision  of  processes,  as  the  intuitive,  com- 
parative, by  opposition,  etymological,  by  reasoning,  descrip- 
tive, by  internal  observation,  repetitive,  synoptic,  by  repro- 
duction, and  eleven  processes  besides ! 


1  To  note  but  one,  see  the  Cours  de  pfdagogie  et  de  m&hodologi,  by 
M.  H.  Braun,  inspector  of  the  normal  schools  of  Belgium,  Brussels, 
1885,  p.  954. 


•  METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  271 

What  good  can  come  from  this  tedious  analysis,  from 
this  complicated  enumeration,  from  this  purely  verbal 
science,  in  which  hundreds  of  words  are  employed,  and 
yet  teach  nothing  of  the  things  themselves?  Teaching 
would  become  a  very  laborious  art,  were  it  necessary,  in 
order  to  be  a  good  instructor,  to  have  lodged  in  the  mem- 
ory all  these  definitions  of  pure  form,  all  these  insipid 
abstractions.  It  is  said  that  modern  education  tends  to 
approach  nature.  Alas !  we  are  far  from  nature  with 
these  distillers  of  pedagogic  quintessence,  who  split  hairs, 
who  distinguish  and  analyze  the  simplest  things,  and  in- 
vent several  barbarous  terms  to  designate  identical  opera- 
tions. For  a  long  time  it  was  thought  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  reason  well  without  knowing  the  categories 
and  the  rules  of  the  syllogism.  Let  us  not  imagine,  by  a 
similar  illusion,  that  in  order  to  teach  well  one's  memory 
must  be  stuffed  with  this  pedagogic  nonsense,  with  these 
nomenclatures  as  vain  as  pretentious. 

It  is  not  only  their  inutility  that  alarms  us.  "We  also  fear 
that  they  may  divert  the  mind  from  more  serious  interests, 
and  that  this  unsubstantial  food  may  destroy  the  taste  for 
more  solid  and  substantial  aliment.  We  fear  that  that 
which  gives  instruction  its  real  power,  —  life,  inner  emo- 
tion, free  and  original  inspiration,  —  may  succumb  under 
this  maze  of  abstractions  which  fetter  the  mind  and  make 
it  bend  under  the  weight  of  these  dangerous  puerilities. 

Hence  let  us  shun  all  those  sterile  discussions  which  con- 
sist in  knowing,  for  example,  which  are  the  general  prin- 
ciples, the  special  principles,  the  positive  principles,  the 
negative  principles  of  teaching;1  or,  still  further,  "whether 
analysis  is  a  method  or  a  form."  2  Let  us  be  satisfied  with 
a  few  definite  notions,  and  as  summary  as  possible. 


1  M.  Braun,  op.  cU.,  p.  200. 
a  Ibid.,  p.  236. 


272  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY.. 

280.  METHODS,  MODES,  AND  PROCESSES  OF  INSTRUC- 
TION.—  Without  wishing  to  multiply  distinctions,  it  is  nev- 
ertheless impossible  to  confound  with  methods,  properly 
so-called,  what  it  has  been  agreed  to  call  modes  of 
teaching. 

Modes  of  teaching  depend  neither  on  the  order  which 
is  followed  nor  upon  the  means  which  are  employed  for 
instructing  children ;  they  have  reference  simply  to  the 
different  groups  of  pupils  and  to  different  ways  in  which 
the  instruction  is  distributed. 

There  is  the  individual  mode,  as  when  the  teacher  ad- 
dresses himself  to  a  single  pupil ;  or  the  simultaneous 
mode,  as  when  he  addresses  himself  to  several  pupils,  as 
to  a  whole  class ;  or  the  mutual  mode,  when  the  teacher 
stands  aside  and  requires  the  children  to  instruct  one 
another. 

The  individual  mode  is  really  appropriate  only  in  private 
education,  where  a  preceptor  is  face  to  face  with  a 
single  pupil.  At  school  there  is  no  propriety  in  proceed- 
ing in  this  way,  and  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  class 
where  the  teacher  repeats  forty  times  to  forty  pupils  what 
it  suffices  to  say  once  to  all. 

It  was  this  system,  however,  or  something  very  like  it, 
that  was  formerly  employed  in  the  early  history  of  the 
school.  In  the  seventeenth  century,  for  example,  the 
Ecole  paroissiale,  a  school  manual  of  the  times,  says  in 
literal  terms :  ' '  Those  who  go  to  the  master  to  read 

shall  present  themselves  but  two  at  once The 

teacher  shall  call  the  writers  to  his  desk,  two  by  two,  to 
correct  their  exercises."1 

All  that  remains,  all  that  can  remain  of  individual  in- 
struction, in  a  class  regularly  organized,  is  the  interroga- 

1  L' Ecole  paroissiale,  1654,  3e  partie,  Chap.  IV 


METHODS  IN   GENEEAL.  273 

tion  which  the  teacher  addresses  to  a  single  pupil.  Such 
interrogations  should  be  made  with  a  loud  voice,  in  order 
that  all  the  pupils  may  participate  in  the  exercise. 

As  to  the  mutual  mode,  it  was  but  an  expedient  sug- 
gested by  necessity  at  the  time  when  teachers  were  scarce 
and  resources  were  limited,  and  it  was  necessary  at  slight 
expense  to  instruct  well  or  ill  a  very  large  number  of 
pupils.1  Almost  universally  abandoned  to-day,  and  virtu- 
ally condemned,  the  mutual  system  never  had  a  claim  in 
theory  to  be  regarded  as  a  rational  mode  of  school 
organization. 

There  remains  the  simultaneous  mode,2  which  is  the  only 
one  possible  in  classes  more  or  less  numerous,  if  it  is 
desired  that  without  loss  of  time  the  sound  instruction 
of  an  experienced  teacher,  not  that  of  a  monitor  without 
authority,  should  be  directly  transmitted  to  all  the  pupils. 

It  is  true  that  the  simultaneous  mode,  though  it  is  the 
general  rule  and  the  prevailing  form  of  instruction,  ought 
not  to  proscribe  absolutely  the  incidental  and  exceptional 
use  of  other  systems.  So  far  as  possible,  the  teacher 
ought,  while  addressing  himself  to  all,  to  speak  to  each ; 
he  ought  to  take  account  of  the  vivacity  of  some  and  the 
slowness  of  others ;  he  should  vary  his  language,  so  as  to 
accommodate  himself  to  the  different  aptitudes  of  his 
pupils ;  finally,  he  should  not  forget  that,  though  his 
instruction  is  simultaneous,  his  attention  and  his  efforts 
ought  to  remain  individual. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  very  large  schools  and  in  those 
where  a  single  teacher  has  three  divisions  to  manage,  the 

1  Swiss  teachers  distinguish  a  mode  of  instruction  as  the  magistral, 
"  that  which  is  entirely  given  by  the  master,  without  co-operation  on 
the  part  of  pupils." 

2  See  Compayre's  History  of  Pedagogy,  pp.  513,  619 ;   also  Gill's 
Systems  of  Education,  Chap.  IV. 


274  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

master  sometimes  needs  to  appeal  to  the  good-will  of  his 
best  pupils,  and  thus  to  employ  something  like  mutual 
instruction.  This  is  what  is  called  the  mixed  mode.1 

281.  METHODS  AND   PROCESSES.  —  There   might  also  be 
retained,  although  it  is    of  less   importance,  the    classical 
distinction   between  methods  and  processes,  methods  being 
the    sum    of    the    principles    which    preside    over    instruc- 
tion, assign  to  it   its   end,  regulate   its   order,  and  deter- 
mine   its    course ;    while    processes    signify   the    particular 
means  which  are  employed  in  the  application  of  methods. 
Thus  to   demonstrate   geometrical  truths  is   a   method ;  to 
exhibit  them  on  a  board,  and  then  cause  them  to   be   re- 
peated by   the  pupils,   is   a  process.     To   give   a  didactic 
exposition  of   historical  facts  is  a  method ;  to  require  re- 
statements from  pupils  is  a  process. 

282.  GENERAL  METHOD. — The  further  pedagogy  enters 
into  the  detail  of  methods   and  into  the  minute  examina- 
tion   of    processes,  the   nearer   it   will   approach   its   end, 
which  is  not  to  construct  beautiful  theories,  but  to  render 
practical    services.      However,   before    entering  upon    the 
different    varieties    of    studies,   before    searching    for    the 
rules  which  are  especially  adapted  to  each  of  them,  it  is 
not  without  use  to  throw  a  glance  over  the  general  methods 
of  instruction  and    the   rules   applicable    to    all  the  parts 
of  the  programme.     Besides  being  interesting  in  itself  to 
reduce  apparent  diversities  to  unity,  and  to  look  for  essen- 
tial   principles  in  the  multitude  of  particular  applications, 
educators    have    so     extended    the    list    of    methods,  they 

1  By  addressing  himself  to  each  of  his  pupils  individually,  the 
master  learns  to  know  his  pupils  better,  to  treat  them  according  to 
their  particular  characters,  and  can  better  follow  the  development  of 
their  minds.  ( Wilm,  Essai  sur  I'tducation  du  peuple.) 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  275 

offer  us  so  great  a  luxuriance  and  so  stately  a  display 
of  pedagogical  instruments,  that  it  is  necessary  to  sim- 
plify their  classifications  and  to  try  to  introduce  some 
clearness  into  a  subject  which  it  seems  so  easy  to  make 
obscure. 

283.  CLASSIFICATION  OF  METHODS. — It  is  no  longer 
two  or  three  methods  which  the  classical  treatises  on 
pedagogy  distinguish ;  but  if  we  are  to  trust  these  authori- 
ties, there  are  more  than  a  dozen  different  methods.  In 
the  presence  of  this  endless  catalogue  we  may  well  imag- 
ine that  the  teacher  experiences  a  sort  of  dismay.  Are 
there,  in  fact,  so  many  ways  of  correct  procedure?  Does 
good  instruction  admit  of  so  many  refinements  and  com- 
plications ?  No ;  and  it  needs  only  a  little  attention  to  be 
convinced  that  these  classifications  and  tabular  state- 
ments can  be  easily  reduced  without  any  detriment  to 
facts,  and  simply  by  pruning  away  a  vain  display  of 
words. 

We  shall  then  place  no  reliance  on  the  synoptical  table 
of  M.  Daguet,  who  distinguishes  methods  as  the  educative, 
the  rational,  the  practical,  the  progressive,  the  synthetic, 
the  analytic,  the  intensive,  the  inventive,  and  the  intuitive, 
to  which  must  be  added,  according  to  other  authorities,  the 
experimental,  the  socratic,  the  inductive,  the  deductive,  the 
demonstrative,  and  the  expositive,  without  counting  the  com- 
posite methods  which  result  from  the  coupling  of  two  simple 
methods,  such  as  the  analytic-synthetic,  the  demonstrative- 
expositive,  the  demonstrative-interrogative,  etc.,  etc.1  We 
shall  attempt  to  show  that  at  bottom,  behind  this  verbiage, 
there  are  concealed  at  most  two  or  three  real  distinctions ; 
that  methods  might  be  reduced  to  two,  if  we  regard  merely 

1  We  may  still  distinguish  as  methods  the  systems  followed  by 
different  educators,  as  the  methods  of  Jacotot,  Pestalozzi,  Froebel,  etc. 


276  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

the  order  which  is  followed  in  the  distribution  and  in  the 
connection  of  the  truths  or  facts  taught ;  and  that  at  most 
there  are  four,  if  we  take  into  account,  not  merely  the  in- 
terior nexus  which  connects  the  different  propositions  of 
which  a  given  study  is  composed,  but  also  the  form  which 
the  teacher  gives  to  his  instruction. 

284.  INTERIOR  ORDER  OP  TRUTHS  WHICH  ARE  TO  BE 
EXPOUNDED  ;  INDUCTION  AND  DEDUCTION.  —  Let  us  begin  by 
considering  the  first  element,  the  first  factor  of  method,  — 
the  logical  order  which  presides  over  the  sequence  of  propo- 
sitions. 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  teacher  who  communicates 
truth,  like  the  scholar  who  discovers  it,  has  at  his  com- 
mand only  two  methods,  induction  and  deduction.  He 
either  takes  facts  for  his  point  of  departure,  and  having 
made  his  pupils  observe  and  test  them,  he  classifies  them 
according  to  their  resemblances,  and  leads  the  pupil  to 
the  law  which  includes  them ;  and  this  is  the  pedagogical 
application  of  the  inductive  method.  Or  he  starts  with 
general  truths  and  definitions  which  he  explains  and 
causes  to  be  comprehended,  and  by  deduction  he  passes 
from  these  principles  and  rules  to  the  applications  and  to 
the  particular  cases  which  naturally  flow  from  them ;  and 
then  the  method  is  deductive. 

Let  us  take  examples.  If  in  the  teaching  of  grammar 
we  first  present  the  rule  and  then  seek  to  find  its  appli- 
cations, we  proceed  by  deduction ;  but  if,  on  the  contrary, 
we  begin  by  presenting  to  the  child  examples  or  particu- 
lar cases,  in  order  that  we  may  then  suggest  the  idea  of 
the  rule,  the  process  is  inductive.  The  teacher  of  geom- 
etry who  at  the  outset  lays  down  axioms  and  definitions, 
and  then  proves  that  such  or  such  a  theorem  is  the 
necessary  consequence  of  them,  gives  a  demonstration, 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  277 

or,  what  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  a  series  of  deduc- 
tions. The  professor  of  physics  who  appeals  to  the  ob- 
servation of  his  pupils,  who  performs  experiments  before 
them,  who  shows  them  the  bodies  which  are  the  subjects 
of  study  and  makes  an  analysis  of  their  elements,  em- 
ploys in  succession  the  different  processes  of  induction. 
In  history  also  we  proceed  by  deduction  or  induction, 
according  as  we  set  out  with  a  definition,  as  of  the  feudal 
system,  for  example,  or  with  the  different  facts  which 
constitute  the  feudal  system. 

285.  EXTERIOR  FORM  OF  INSTRUCTION  ;  CONSECUTIVE 
EXPOSITION  OR  INTERROGATION.  —  But  instruction  does 
not  differ  merely  by  the  inductive  or  the  deductive  course 
which  is  impressed  on  the  series  of  propositions ;  there 
must  also  be  taken  into  account  the  exterior  form  which 
is  given  to  instruction  while  transmitting  it  to  pupils.  In 
fact,  we  can  proceed  in  two  ways :  we  may  state  the 
object  of  the  lesson,  and,  speaking  authoritatively,  may 
teach  by  uninterrupted  discourse ;  or,  by  interrogating 
pupils  and  making  suggestions  to  them,  we  may  make 
them  discover  for  themselves  what  we  wish  them  to 
learn.1  Hence  a  new  distinction  and  two  different  meth- 
ods :  the  method  of  exposition  and  the  method  of  interro- 
gation, or  socratic  method. 

1  Suppose  we  have  to  give  a  lesson  on  the  distinctive  characters  of 
the  three  kingdoms  of  nature.  I  will  either  start  with  the  division 
of  the  three  categories  of  bodies,  and  then  pass  to  the  distinctive  char- 
acters of  minerals,  vegetables,  and  animals,  and  end  with  examples ;  or, 
following  the  same  course,  will  proceed  by  interrogations,  such  as 
"  What  is  meant  by  natural  history  ?  What  is  its  triple  object  ?  Ot 
what  does  Geology  treat?  Botany?  Zoology?  What  are  the  essential 
differences  between  minerals,  vegetables,  and  animals  ?  Give  examples, 
etc."  (M.  Horner,  Guide  pratique  de  I'instituteur,  Paris,  1882,  p.  9.) 


278  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY.     ' 

286.  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  FOUR  ESSENTIAL  METHODS.  — 
But  let  us  hasten  to  remark  that  the  two  elements  of 
method,  order  and  form,  are  not  separated  in  fact :  on  the 
contrary,  they  are  united.  In  other  terms,  whether  we  pro- 
ceed by  induction  or  by  deduction,  we  must  either  expound 
or  interrogate.  Consequently  there  are  four  general 
methods,  to  which  all  the  others  are  to  be  referred : 

1.  The  method  of  induction,  in  the  form  of  exposition. 

2.  The  method  of  induction,  in  the  form  of  interrogation. 

3.  The  method  of  deduction  or  demonstration,  in  the  form  of 
exposition. 

4.  The  method  of  deduction,  in  the  form  of  interrogation. 

Each  of  these  methods  has  its  characteristics  and  its 
peculiar  advantages.  In  a  general  way  it  may  be  said 
that  the  choice  between  deduction  and  induction  is  deter- 
mined mainly  by  the  nature  of  the  science  which  is  to  be 
taught.  The  mathematics  hardly  allow  the  use  of  any 
method  but  the  deductive,  while  the  physical  sciences  are 
to  be  treated  inductively.  On  the  other  hand,  whether 
preference  shall  be  given  to  continuous  exposition  or  to 
the  system  of  interrogation  depends  in  great  part  on  the 
age  and  the  intelligence  of  the  children  to  whom  we  address 
ourselves.  When  Fenelon  said,  though  with  some  exag- 
geration, "Employ  formal  lessons  as  little  as  possible," 
he  was  thinking  particularly  of  little  children,  to  whose 
weakness  a  long,  uninterrupted  discourse  is  badly  adapted. 
Continuous  exposition  is,  however,  necessary  in  a  great 
number  of  cases,  were  it  only  to  obviate  the  slowness  of 
the  instruction.  On  the  other  hand,  the  interrogative 
method  has  the  advantage  of  more  directly  calling  into 
play  the  activity  of  the  pupil ;  it  is  the  method  of  all 
others  for  promoting  the  discovery  of  the  truth,  for 
suggesting  it  without  imposing  it. 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  279 

287.  REDUCTION  OF  THE  DIFFERENT  METHODS  TO  THESE 
FOUR  TYPES. — With  this  explanation,  it  is  easy  to  prove 
that  the  most  of  the  methods  wrongly  distinguished  by  edu- 
cators may  be  reduced  to  the  four  types  which  we  have  just 
established  and  are  blended  with  them.* 

For  example,  what  is  the  method  called  the  inventive 
except  the  method  of  induction  and  interrogation,  —  that 
which,  avoiding  didactic  lessons,  demands  of  the  pupil  a 
personal  effort,  and  makes  him  discover  for  himself  what 
we  wish  to  teach  him? 

It  is  useless  to  speak  of  the  heuristic  method,  which 
differs  in  no  respect  from  the  inventive,  save  that  inventive 
comes  from  a  Latin  word,  and  heuristic  from  a  Greek  word. 
Diversity  of  expressions  should  not  make  us  think  that 
there  is  a  real  diversity  in  methods. 

The  demonstrative  method  is  simply  synonymous  with 
deductive  method,  a  demonstration  being  but  a  body  of 
deductions. 

The  catechetic*  method,  which  consists  in  stating  ques- 
tions and  demanding  replies,  does  not  differ  essentially  from 
the  interrogative  method,  nor  from  the  Socratic  method, 
which  requires  the  teacher,  in  imitation  of  the  celebrated 
Greek  philosopher,  to  stimulate  the  good  sense  and  reason 
of  his  pupils  by  his  interrogations. 

1  We  cannot  subscribe  to  the  opinion  of  M.  Buisson,  who,  doubtless 
through  a  reaction  against  the  abuse  of  multiplying  methods,  falls 
into  the  opposite  extreme  and  declares  that,  properly  speaking,  there  is 
but  one  method  of  pedagogy,  a  universal  method  which  embraces  the 
whole  of  education.    This  is  the  intuitive  method.  —  See  his  Rapport 
sur  {'instruction  primaire  a  I'Exposition  universelle  de  Vienne  en  1875, 
Chap.  IV. 

2  This  word  is  very  fashionable  in  Belgium,  where  it  is  the  root  of 
a  whole  family  of  words.     M.  Braun  defines  catechesis,  which  is  the 
lesson  given  in  the  form  of  questions  and  answers ;  cntechist,  every 
man  who  teaches  in  this  way ;  and  catechumen,  the  pupil  instructed  by 
this  method. 


280  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

It  is  by  an  abuse  of  words  that  M.  Daguet  decorates  with 
the  name  of  methods  what  he  calls  the  educative,  rational, 
practical,  and  progressive  methods.  These  are  the  general 
characteristics  of  instruction,  the  essential  tendencies  of 
modern  pedagogy  ;  they  are  expressions  for  the  ends  to  be 
pursued ;  truly  speaking,  they  are  not  methods,  —  that  is, 
co-ordinated  systems  of  means  and  processes.1 

There  remain  the  so-called  analytic,  synthetic,  intuitive, 
and  experimental  methods,  upon  which  much  fuller  explana- 
tions are  necessary.2 

288.  ANALYSIS  AND  SYNTHESIS. — I  know  of  no  terms 
more  badly  defined,  or  whose  meaning  has  been  more  ob- 
scured by  the  misuse  made  of  them,  than  the  words  analysis 
and  synthesis.  So  it  would  cost  me  no  regret  to  see  them 
disappear  from  the  vocabulary  of  pedagogy,  where,  with 
their  pretentious  and  pompous  airs,  they  bring  nothing  but 
great  confusion  and  obscurity,  without  any  positive  advan- 
tage. 

Analysis  and  synthesis  have  in  reality  no  precise  meaning, 
save  in  chemistry,  where  they  designate  two  inverse  opera- 
tions which  consist  either  in  decomposing  or  in  recomposing 
bodies,  in  separating  or  in  uniting  the  elements  which  com- 
pose them.  Everywhere  else,  in  grammar,  in  mathematics, 
the  words  analysis  and  synthesis  are  employed  only  by  an- 
alogy to  express  operations  which  have  vague  resemblances 
to  the  analysis  and  synthesis  of  chemistry. 

1  It  has  been  justly  observed  that  it  is  wholly  improper  to  employ 
the  word  method  to  designate  such  or  such  a  school  process,  as  method 
of  reading,  of  writing,  of  arithmetic,  or  of  drawing.    "  It  would  seem," 
says  M.  Buisson,  "  that  there  are  as  many  methods  as  branches  of 
study  or  school  manuals." 

2  We  are  far  from  having  enumerated  all  the  methods  which  it  has 
pleased  educators  to  distinguish  and  christen.    There  are  still  to  be 
noted  the  natural,  moral,  historical,  and  universal  methods. 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  281 

289.  CONFUSED  USE  OF  THESE  WORDS.  — The  clearest  and 
most  accurate  thinkers  fail  in  their  efforts  to  define  the  sig- 
nification of  analysis  and  synthesis.     For  example,  Littre 
tells  us : 

"  The  analytic  method,  or  method  of  decomposition,  starts  from 
actual  facts  and  attempts  to  liberate  their  elements.  It  is  also 
called  the  method  of  discovery.  The  synthetic  method,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  that  which,  after  having  recognized  a  great  number  of 
truths,  reunites  them  all  under  a  general  principle,  and  thus  forms 
a  synthesis  of  them.  It  is  also  called  the  method  of  doctrine,  be- 
cause when  we  teach  a  science  we  ordinarily  start  from  general  princi- 
ples in  order  to  deduce  from  them  their  consequences"  l 

With  due  deference  to  Littre,  the  last  part  of  this  defini- 
tion is  contradictory.  To  deduce  consequences  from  a  gen- 
eral principle  is  not  at  all  the  same  thing  as  to  include  a 
great  number  of  truths  under  a  general  principle.  In  the 
first  case  the  process  is  one  of  real  deduction ;  in  the  second, 
it  is  rather  inductive. 

290.  THE  SO-CALLED  ANALYTIC  AND  SYNTHETIC  METHODS. 
—  A  sufficient  proof  that  it  has  been  wrong  to  introduce  the 
words  analysis  and   synthesis  into  pedagogy,    is   the   fact 
that  different  authors  have  not  come  to  an  understanding  as 
to  the  use  of  these  expressions.     What  some  call  synthesis 
others  call  analysis,  and  vice  versa. 

Thus,  for  the  greater  number  of  educators,  analysis  is  the 
equivalent  of  induction,  of  invention,  of  experimental  re- 
search ;  synthesis,  on  the  contrary,  is  almost  the  same  thing 
as  deduction,  demonstration,  didactic  exposition. 

But  this  sense,  which  is  the  true  one,  is  not  universally 
admitted.  Swiss  educators,  for  example,  go  contrary  to  the 
general  usage. 

1  Dictionnaire  de  la  langue  fran^aise,  au  mot  Analyse. 


282  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  The  form  which  is  best  adapted  to  an  elementary  book,"  says 
M.  Daguet,  "is  the  synthetic  or  progressive  form,  —  that  is,  that 
which  proceeds  from  the  particular  to  the  general.  The  analytic 
form,  which  proceeds  from  the  general  to  the  particular  and  be- 
gins with  the  definition,  may  be  followed  in  works  which  are  used 
in  the  higher  course."  1 

So  also  M.  Horner  asserts  that  "the  synonym  of  dem- 
onstration is  deduction  and  analysis ;  that  the  inventive 
process  is  often  confounded  with  induction,  synthesis,  and 
heuristic."2  This  is  exactly  opposed  to  the  opinion  of 
M.  Charbonneau,  according  to  which  "the  demonstrative 
method  is  also  named  synthetic,  while  the  inventive  is  called 
analytic."8 

We  believe  that  the  most  general  usage  conforms  to  this 
last  opinion.  But  from  all  these  hesitations  and  contradic- 
tions it  seems  to  us  to  follow  that  it  is  best  to  leave  analysis 
and  synthesis  to  the  language  of  scientists,  and  to  eliminate 
them  from  the  vocabulary  of  pedagogy,  where  they  serve 
only  to  obscure  a  subject  which  of  itself  is  quite  simple. 
In  all  cases  it  is  easy  to  recollect  from  what  we  have  said, 
that  the  analytic  method  is  but  another  term  to  designate 
the  inductive  method,  and  the  synthetic  method  but  a  syn- 
onym for  the  method  of  deduction  and  demonstration.4 

291.  Is  THERE  AN  INTUITIVE  METHOD?  —  There  could  be 
no  doubt  of  it,  if  we  listen  to  the  enthusiastic  cries  which 
from  all  directions  salute  the  advent  of  this  royal  method, 
destined  it  seems  to  replace  all  others  and  to  regenerate 
instruction.  And  yet,  if  we  consider  things  attentively,  we 
shall  be  convinced  that  the  so-called  intuitive  method  is 

1  Daguet,  op.  cit.,  p.  148. 

2  Horner,  op.  cit.,  p.  12. 

3  Charbonneau,  Cours  de  pe'flagogie,  p.  261. 

4  See  Appendix  B. 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  283 

either  but  a  special  process  which  can  and  should  be  con- 
nected with  the  essential  methods  which  we  have  distin- 
guished, or,  if  we  understand  it  in  its  most  extended  sense, 
that  it  is  confounded  with  the  general  spirit  which  ought  to 
animate  and  vivify  all  the  parts  of  instruction. 

292.  DIFFERENT    SENSES    OF    THE    WORD    INTUITION.  — 
Usage    and   fashion   sometimes   subject   words   to   strange 
adventures. 

Here  is  the  word  intuition,  which  in  the  seventeenth 
century  signified,  in  theological  language,  the  immediate 
and  mystical  vision  of  God,  and  which,  in  philosophical 
language,  signified  the  evidence  of  immaterial  truths  and 
of  the  knowledge  of  the  principles  of  the  reason ;  and 
to-day,  by  some  sort  of  confusion,  this  same  word,  de- 
scended from  the  heights  of  metaphysics,  is  employed  by 
educators  as  the  synonym  of  sensible  and  material  percep- 
tion. 

In  Switzerland,  Belgium,  and  Germany,  the  intuitive 
method  is  almost  always  confounded  with  instruction  through 
the  senses,  and  especially  with  instruction  through  the  sense 
of  sight. 

"  The  intuitive  method  consists  in  submitting  things  to  the 
direct  examination  of  the  organs  of  sense,  and  especially  of  sight. 

"  Intuitive  instruction  is  that  which  is  addressed  to  the  mind  and 
heart  through  the  medium  of  the  senses,  and  particularly  of  the 
sight." 1 

293.  SENSIBLE  INTUITION  AND  INTELLECTUAL  INTUITION.  — 
But  in  France  the  meaning  of  the  word  "intuition"  has 
been  generalized,  and  the  intuitive  method,  from  what  our 
authorities  in  pedagogy  say,  comprehends  something  very 

1  Traitt  thtorique  et  pratique  de  mtthodologie,  par  Acbille  V.  A. 
Namur,  1880,  p.  153. 


284  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

different  from  lessons  addressed  to  the  senses  and  teaching 
through  the  eye.  There  is  intellectual  intuition,  and  even 
moral  intuition. 

Intellectual  intuition,  according  to  M.  Buisson,  is  the 
clear  and  definite  consciousness  of  all  the  operations  of  our 
mind. 

"  I  am  conscious  of  my  existence,  of  my  desires,  of  my  feelings,  of 
my  volitions  ;  I  see  them  and  feel  them  within  myself,  so  to  speak, 
more  clearly  and  more  distinctly  than  the  eye  sees  colors  or  the 
ear  hears  sounds."  l 

The  same  thing  would  be  true  of  the  reason  also,  and 
thus  intuition  returns  to  its  primitive  signification, — the 
immediate  adhesion  of  the  mind  to  the  great  speculative 
truths. 

As  to  moral  intuition,  M.  Buisson  defines  it  as  follows : 

"  It  is  taking  possession  at  once,  by  the  mind,  the  heart,  and  the 
conscience,  of  those  axioms  of  the  moral  order  and  of  those  in- 
demonstrable and  indubitable  truths  which  are  the  regulating 
principles  of  our  conduct.  There  is  an  intuition  of  the  good  and 
the  beautiful,  as  there  is  an  intuition  of  the  true ;  only  it  is  still 
more  delicate,  more  irreducible  to  demonstrative  processes,  resists 
analysis  to  a  greater  degree,  is  more  fugitive  and  more  inexpli- 
cable, because  it  is  complicated  with  elements  foreign  to  the 
intelligence  proper,  and  because  it  is  commingled  with  the  emo- 
tions, the  feelings,  the  influences  of  the  imagination,  and  the 
movements  of  the  heart." 

294.  INTUITION  IN  ITS  MOST  RESTRICTED  SENSE. — From 
these  explanations  it  follows,  first,  that  intuition,  and  con- 
sequently the  intuitive  method,  designate  things  that  are 
really  very  different. 

In  its  most  restricted  sense,  and  taken  as  the  synonym  of 

1  See  Dictionnaire  de  pedagogic,  article  Intuition. 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  285 

sense-perception,  intuition  has  given  rise  to  object  lessons, 
or  the  substitution  of  concrete  realities  for  abstractions  and 
words,  as  the  first  exercise  of  the  intelligence.1  We  will- 
ingly accept  the  principle  laid  down  by  Pestalozzi,  that 
"  intuition  is  the  source  of  all  our  knowledge  ;  "  on  condition, 
however,  that  by  the  word  source  we  understand  only  the 
initial  origin  of  our  ideas  which,  borrowed  first  from  percep- 
tion and  observation,  have  then  need  of  being  elaborated  by 
our  faculties  of  reflection.  But  it  is  very  evident  that 
in  this  sense,  intuition,  if  it  is  the  point  of  departure  of 
a  method,  of  the  inductive  method,  does  not  constitute  a 
method  by  itself. 

Let  us  multiply  intuitions  for  the  child  to  our  heart's  con- 
tent,—  that  is,  clear  and  vivid  perceptions;  let  us  even 
admit  that  intuition  has  something  peculiar  and  character- 
istic, and  that  it  cannot  be  confounded  with  simple  percep- 
tion ;  let  us  grant  that  it  does  not  suffice  to  present  an 
object  to  the  sight  of  the  child  in  order  that  there  may  be  a 
real  intuition,  but  that  in  order  to  produce  this  particular 
state  of  mind  special  conditions  are  required,  because  the 
eye  does  not  always  see  when  it  looks,  because  the  senses 
grow  tired,  and  that  to  excite  a  vivid  and  exact  impression 
in  the  mind  there  is  a  moment  to  be  seized  which  is  not 
lasting.  But  for  all  this,  it  remains  no  less  true  that  intui- 
tion, from  this  point  of  view,  is  at  most  but  a  more  pene- 
trating observation,  a  more  intense  perception  of  sensible 
realities ;  and  that,  consequently,  it  may  properly  be  an 
important  element  of  the  method  whose  object  is  to  give  us 
an  exact  knowledge  of  things,  but  not  this  entire  method, 
which  cannot  dispense  with  reflection,  comparison,  and 
reason. 

So    also   with   respect   to   intellectual   intuition,   to   that 

1  See  chapter  third,  Part  Second. 


286  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

which  seizes  axioms  at  a  glance,  the  intuitive  method  is 
still  but  the  point  of  departure,  the  rational  foundation  of 
the  deductive  method,  which  ought  doubtless  to  be  based  on 
well-understood  principles,  on  evident  propositions,  but 
which  constructs  on  these  principles,  by  means  of  reasoning, 
a  whole  superstructure  of  science. 

295.  INTUITION  IN  ITS  WIDEST  SENSE. — But,  understood 
in  its  wide  sense,  is  intuition  even  then  the  principle  of  a 
distinct  method  of  instruction?  —  In  what  does  it  consist, 
outside  of  its  application  to  object  lessons  ?  M.  Buisson 
replies : 

"  It  consists  in  a  certain  march  of  the  instruction  which  reserves 
to  the  child  the  pleasure  and  the  profit,  if  not  of  discovery  and 
surprise,  which  would  perhaps  be  promising  too  much,  at  least  of 
initiative  and  intellectual  activity."  x 

The  intuitive  method,  then,  would  be  that  which,  accord- 
ing to  the  saying  of  Fenelon,  ' '  moves  the  springs  of  the 
child's  soul."  The  purpose  would  be  to  make  him  judge  by 
intuition,  after  having  taught  him  to  perceive  by  intuition. 
"  To  make  the  child  think,"  says  M.  Buisson  again,  "  would 
be  the  essence  of  the  intuitive  method."  But  is  not  this  to 
force  the  sense  of  the  word,  still  to  call  ' '  intuition "  the 
personal  thought,  the  clear  and  exact  intelligence,  which 
results  from  the  efforts  of  attention,  the  active  participation 
of  the  pupil  in  the  instruction  he  receives?  Moreover,  if 
this  is  the  true  meaning,  the  real  pedagogical  application  of 
intuition,  is  it  not  evident  that  there  is  here  no  method, 
properly  speaking,  a  method  always  supposing  a  series  of 
processes  and  of  means,  while  intuition  thus  understood  is 
but  the  general  character  which  pertains  to  all  instruction  ? 

1  Dictionnaire  de  pedagogic,  article  already  cited. 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  287 

Intuition  ought  to  accompany  all  parts  of  a  course  of 
study,  just  as  consciousness  envelops  all  the  phenomena  of 
the  external  world.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  the  soul  of  every 
method  and  inspires  all  teaching  which  would  not  merely 
drily  transmit  the  commonplaces  of  the  soul,  as  the  light 
illumines  all  births,  but  provokes  the  light  and  warmth  of 
the  spirit,  and  through  instruction  assures  education ;  but 
when  all  has  been  said,  it  is  not  a  method.  To  say  with  M. 
Buisson  that  it  consists  not  in  the  application  of  such  or 
such  a  process,  but  in  the  intention  and  general  habit  of 
making  and  permitting  the  child's  mind  to  act  in  conformity 
with  his  intellectual  instincts,  is  precisely  to  acknowledge 
that  it  is  to  pedagogy  what  the  search  for  truth  is  to  science, 
and  the  pursuit  of  the  beautiful  to  poetry,  —  an  ideal,  a 
supreme  end,  but  in  no  wise  a  body  of  practical  means,  or- 
ganized into  a  method. 

296.  EXPERIMENTAL  METHOD. — We  know  what  services 
have  been  rendered  science  by  the  substitution  of  the  ex- 
perimental method  for  the  method  of  pure  reasoning  and 
abstract  hypothesis.  The  natural  sciences  did  not  really 
exist  till  the  day  when  the  experimental  logic  of  Bacon 
broke  with  the  old  traditions  of  the  syllogism,  and  perpet- 
uated a  revolution  which  the  scholars  of  the  sixteenth 
century  had  already  provided  for ;  till  the  day  when  thinkers 
had  decided  to  observe,  to  experiment,  and  from  observed 
facts  to  make  a  patient  induction  of  the  laws  which  gov- 
erned them. 

Henceforth  sovereign  in  the  domain  of  the  concrete 
sciences,  when  the  discovery  of  truth  is  at  stake,  cannot 
the  experimental  method  be  transported  into  pedagogy  and 
applied  to  the  teaching  of  the  truths  which  it  has  served  to 
discover?  In  other  terms,  in  order  to  form  and  to  instruct 
the  intelligence  of  the  child,  ought  not  the  art  of  education 


288  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

to  employ  the  processes  of  observation  and  experiment 
analogous  to  those  which  science  has  utilized  for  organizing 
itself? 

The  reply  cannot  be  doubtful,  and  it  is  easy  to  show  that 
the  methods  brought  into  prominence  by  the  educators  of 
the  last  century  are  but  different  forms  of  the  experimental 
method. 

What,  for  example,  is  the  so-called  intuitive  method,  but 
a  constant  appeal  to  experiment  and  observation?  So  the 
method  which,  under  different  names,  is  called  in  succession 
the  intuitive,  the  heuristic,  the  analytic,  or  the  inductive 
method,  and  which  always  consists  in  making  the  pupil  dis- 
cover the  truth  which  we  would  teach  him,  is  but  a  detached 
fragment  of  the  great  experimental  method. 

In  a  word,  the  experimental  method  is  after  all  but 
another  and  more  pretentious  name  for  designating  the 
whole  or  a  part  of  the  inductive  method. 

297.  GENERAL  SPIRIT  OP  A  GOOD  METHOD. — All  the 
considerations  which  precede  have  no  other  practical  utility 
than  that  of  obliging  the  teacher  to  reflect  upon  the  princi- 
ples of  instruction  themselves,  and  upon  the  necessity  of 
taking  into  account  both  the  nature  of  the  children  to  whom 
he  addresses  himself,  and  the  nature  of  the  knowledge  which 
he  communicates. 

Let  no  one  imagine  that  it  is  sufficient,  in  order  to  teach 
well,  to  know  the  abstract  distinctions  of  pedagogy.  The 
first  condition  for  being  a  good  teacher  is  always  to  possess 
a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  subject  which  he  has  to  teach. 
An  English  educator,  M.  Laurie,  justly  observes,  "A 
teacher  himself  possessed  of  a  disciplined  intelligence  and 
of  a  will  fortified  by  religion,  reason,  and  experience,  may 
be  working  wisely  towards  the  production  in  others  of  that 
which  is  in  himself,  and  be  unconsciously  adapting  his  proc- 


METHODS   IN   GENERAL.  289 

esses  to  a  sound  method."1  But  however  well  endowed 
he  may  be  in  respect  of  instruction  or  intelligence,  he  will 
always  be  inferior  to  a  teacher  who  to  the  same  personal 
qualities  adds  that  which  gives  power,  assurance,  and  deci- 
sion, —  the  reflective  knowledge  of  the  natural  laws  for  the 
development  of  the  intelligence,  of  the  characteristics  of  each 
school  study,  and  consequently  of  the  methods  which  most 
easily  find  the  route  to  the  mind  and  are  best  adapted  to 
each  topic  of  instruction. 

1  S.  S.  Laurie,  Primary  Instruction  in  Relation  to  Education,  1883, 
pp.  15, 16. 


CHAPTEK    II. 

READING  AND  WRITING. 

298.  SUBORDINATION    OF    THE    DIFFERENT    STUDIES. — 
While    causing   the   different  branches   of   the   programme 
to  be   pursued   one   after   another,  and   each  by  itself,  the 
teacher  will  not  lose   sight   of  this   general   principle,  that 
if  each  part  ought  to  be  studied  in  itself,  it  ought  to  be 
studied    also    in    view    of    the    whole ;  that    is,  it    should 
contribute  to  the   general  education  of   the   mind,  awaken 
the  intelligence,  and  furnish  it  with  good  habits  of  order, 
application,    and    consecutive    thinking.      This    remark    is 
applicable    to  reading   and   writing,    which   constitute    the 
elementary  basis  of  all  instruction. 

299.  READING  AND  WRITING. — For  a  long  time  read- 
ing   and    writing,    along    with    number,     constituted     the 
entire  programme  of  the  primary  schools.      To-day   these 
elementary    branches  are    no  more  than  the  conditions    of 
more   complete   studies,  which   respond   more  fully  to   the 
social  necessities  and  needs  of  human  nature.     According 
to  a  very  just  expression,  these  are  instrumental  knowledges  ; 
that  is  to  say,  necessary  instruments  for    acquiring  other 
knowledge'.      But  reading  and  writing,  while  they  are  but 
the  preliminary   means  of   instruction,  have   for  this   very 
reason  a  special  importance. 

300.  THEIR  PLACE  IN  THE  COURSES  OF  STUDY.  —  "  Read- 
ing   and    writing    are    necessarily    the    foundation    of    the 

290 


READING   AND   WRITING.  291 

instruction  given  in  the  elementary  courses,"  says  M. 
Greard.  "First  of  all,  it  is  necessary  to  make  this 
primary  basis  secure."  But  reading  and  writing  remain 
till  the  end  of  the  primary  course  one  of  the  principal 
objects  of  the  teacher's  efforts. 

Even  at  the  beginning  and  in  the  elementary  course, 
reading  and  writing  ought  not  of  themselves  to  occupy 
the  attention  of  the  child  to  the  exclusion  of  every 
other  study.  Different  exercises  in  language,  Simple 
and  familiar  object-lessons,  the  elements  of  drawing,  and 
notions  of  arithmetic  and  geography,  may  and  should 
accompany  them. 

"If  it  is  possible,"  says  M.  Greard,  " to  begin  the  study  of 
numbers  almost  at  the  same  time,  it  is  because  spelling  and  nu- 
meration, and  the  tracing  of  letters  and  figures,  are  exercises  of 
the  same  grade  and  almost  of  the  same  nature." 

Dreary  schools  are  those  where  the  pupil  has  no  choice 
except  between  his  primer  and  his  copy-book !  Were  it 
only  for  introducing  variety  into  this  monotonous  work, 
the  teacher  ought  to  furnish  the  child  with  other  occu- 
pations. 

Especially  should  we  recollect  that  he  is  not  merely  to 
make  of  his  pupils  reading  and  writing  machines,  but  that 
his  ever-present  thought  should  be  to  open  and  stimulate 
the  mind  by  positive  knowledge  and  by  moral  lessons. 

301.  DIFFERENT  GRADES  OF  READING.  —  Reading,  which 
has  been  denned  as  "  the  translation  of  written  language 
into  spoken  language,"  seems  a  very  simple  thing  to 
those  who  know  how  to  read ;  but  for  the  child  who  is 
learning  to  read,  nothing  is  more  complicated  or  more 
difficult.1  "The  extent  and  complicacy  of  this  accom- 

1  Mr.  Bain  defines  it  as  "  the  art  of  pronouncing  words  at  sight  of 
their  visible  characters." 


292  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

plishment,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "make  it  the  work  of  years, 
even  when  not  commenced  very  early."  When  the  child 
knows  his  letters,  over-confident  parents  often  shout 
victory  and  think  that  the  whole  is  done.  The  real 
difficulty,  however,  the  reading  of  words,  begins  only  at 
that  point.  Months  are  often  required  for  the  pupil  to 
pass  from  saying  his  letters  to  fluent  reading. 

We  ought  then  to  distinguish  different  grades  of  read- 
ing :  The  first  grade,  where  the  pupil  learns  to  distinguish 
letters  and  to  know  their  names,  and  where  he  laboriously 
groups  them  in  order  to  pronounce  syllables  and  words ; 
the  second  grade,  where  the  pupil  reads  fluently,  without 
hesitation,  without  feeling  his  way  ;  the  third  grade,  cor- 
responding to  what  is  called  expressive  reading. 

302.  CAUTION  AS  TO  THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  PARTICULAR 
METHODS.  —  In  the  teaching  of  elementary  reading,  as 
in  all  parts  of  instruction,  we  must  be  on  our  guard 
against  the  superstition  of  method.  In  truth,  the  spirit 
which  animates  the  teacher,  and  the  intellectual  and 
moral  qualities  which  distinguish  him,  will  always  be 
worth  more  than  the  best  processes.  Lakanal,  speaking 
of  a  commission  which  the  Council  of  the  Five  Hundred 
had  called  for  the  composition  of  elementary  books,  ex- 
pressed the  opinion  that  there  was  not  in  France  a  single 
good  book  on  the  art  of  teaching  to  read  and  write.  "  Up 
to  this  time,"  he  said,  "it  is  the  patience  of  teachers  and 
pupils  that  has  done  all."  But  notwithstanding  the 
progress  that  has  been  accomplished,  and  though  we  are 
to-day  provided  with  a  great  number  of  good  methods,  it 
is  still  upon  the  patience  and  skill  of  the  teacher  that  we 
must  mainly  count.  The  teacher  ought  to  know  how  to 
give  animation  to  the  reading  lesson,  to  interest  the  pupil 
in  it,  and  if  possible  to  make  attractive  an  exercise  which 


BEADING   AND   WRITING.  293 

in  itself  is  drear y  and  monotonous.  He  will  already 
have  done  much,  if  he  has  been  able  to  inspire  his  pupils 
with  the  desire  of  learning  to  read. 

This  is  what  Rousseau  said,  though  with  his  usual 
exaggeration : 

"  A  great  ado  has  been  made,"  he  says,  "  over  finding  the  best 
methods  of  teaching  to  read.  Cabinets  and  charts  have  been 
invented,  and  the  child's  room  turned  into  a  printing-office.  Locke 
would  have  him  learn  to  read  with  dice.  Was  not  this  a  happy 
invention?  What  a  pity!  A  surer  means  than  all  this,  but  one 
which  is  always  forgotten,  is  the  desire  to  learn.  Give  the  child 
this  desire,  and  then  put  aside  your  cabinets  and  your  dice ;  every 
method  will  then  succeed  well  with  him." 

To  the  same  effect  it  has  often  been  remarked  that 
methods  of  reading,  even  the  best  contrived,  produce 
results  only  through  .the  manner  in  which  they  are 
applied. 

"  In  this  part  of  instruction,  as  in  all  the  others,  the  value  of 
the  process  is  determined  by  the  teacher  who  applies  it.  A  given 
instructor  has  obtained  in  his  school,  through  the  use  of  means 
which  he  has  devised,  the  most  satisfactory  results. 

"  Under  his  direction  generations  of  pupils  have  been  instructed 
with  less  effort,  no  doubt,  than  would  have  been  required  elsewhere  ; 
and  he  yields  to  the  temptation,  certainly  very  natural,  to  embody 
in  a  little  book  the  method  which  he  had  invented  for  himself, 
and  by  this  means  he  hopes  to  render  to  the  pupils  whose  masters 
shall  adopt  it  the  same  service  which  he  has  rendered  his  own. 
Unhappily  the  result  does  not  always  meet  his  expectations."  l 

303.  DESCRIPTION  OF  THE  PRINCIPAL  WATS  OF  TEACH- 
ING TO  READ.  —  On  first  glancing  at  the  innumerable  proc- 
esses which  tUe  fertile  ingenuity  of  educators  has  succes- 

1  Mile.  Chalamet,  op.  tit.,  p.  156. 


294  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

sively  brought  into  use  for  teaching  to  read,  which  fashion 
has  patronized  by  turns,  we  might  be  tempted  to  think 
that  it  is  impossible  to  reduce  to  unity  this  chaos  of  spell- 
ing-books and  charts  of  every  description.1  After  a  little 
more  reflection,  however,  we  become  convinced  that  this 
diversity,  apparently  infinite,  is  due  rather  to  modifications 
of  detail,  and  to  accessory  and  superficial  combinations, 
than  to  essential  and  profound  differences. 

The  first  obvious  distinction  is  that  between  systems 
where  the  teaching  of  reading  is  kept  separate  from  every- 
thing else  and  administered  wholly  by  itself,  and  methods 
that  have  been  very  popular  for  a  few  years  past,  especially 
in  Germany,  which  combine  the  teaching  of  writing  with 
that  of  reading. 

Let  us  first  consider  the  processes  in  which  reading  is  not 
connected  with  writing.  By  leaving  out  of  account  the  ac- 
cessory aids  which  introduce  complications  into  them,  these 
may  be  reduced  to  two,  the  method  by  spelling  and  the 
method  by  direct  syllabication  without  spelling. 

304.  THE  METHOD  BY  SPELLING  (ALPHABETIC  METHOD)  . 
— The  method  most  generally  employed  in  France,  notwith- 
standing the  criticisms  that  have  been  made  of  it,  is  the 
old  way  of  teaching  to  read,  which  consists  first  in  having 
the  letters  named  instead  of  having  them  pronounced,  and 
then  in  having  them  grouped  in  order  to  form  syllables  of 
them. 

"  When  we  reflect  on  all  the  difficulties  which  this  method  pre- 
sents, on  the  effort  of  abstraction  it  requires  of  children,  on  the 
labor  which  the  decomposition  and  the  recomposition  of  syllables 

1  On  the  history  of  the  different  systems  of  readfhg,  see  the  excel- 
lent article  Lecture,  by  M.  Guillaume,  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  ptdagogie  ; 
also,  Hall's  How  to  teach  Heading,  Boston,  1887. 


READING  AND   WRITING.  295 

supposes,  on  the  impossibility  for  the  pupil  to  grasp  the  correspond- 
ence between  the  letters  told  one  after  another  and  the  composite 
sound  which  results  from  them;  we  are  astonished  that  with 
processes  so  defective  children  ever  learn  to  read.  'Whoever 
knows  how  to  read,'  says  Duclos,  '  knows  the  most  difficult  art,  if 
he  has  learned  it  by  the  common  method.'  "  * 

305.  THE  OLD  AND  THE  NEW  SPELLING. — Each  letter 
has  received  a  name,  but  this  name  does  not  correspond  to 
the  relative  value  which  it  has  as  a  sound  in  the  composi- 
tion of  words.  Hence  the  defect,  pointed  out  two  centuries 
ago  by  the  grammarians  of  Port  Royal,  in  the  old  method  of 
spelling. 

"  By  pronouncing  the  consonants  separately  and  making  children 
name  them,"  says  Guyot,  "  there  is  always  joined  to  them  a  vowel, 
namely  e,  which  is  neither  a  part  of  the  syllable  nor  of  the  word, 
and  it  thus  happens  that  the  sound  of  the  letters  as  they  are  pro- 
nounced is  entirely  different  from  that  of  the  letters  combined. 
For  example,  the  child  is  made  to  spell  the  word  bon,  that  is  com- 
posed of  three  letters,  b,  o,  n,  which  he  pronounces  one  after  the 
other.  Now  b,  pronounced  alone,  is  be ;  o  pronounced  alone  is  still  o, 
for  it  is  a  vowel ;  but  n  pronounced  alone  is  ene.  How,  then,  is 
the  child  to  understand  that  all  these  sounds,  which  he  has  been 
made  to  pronounce  separately  by  naming  these  three  letters  one 
after  the  other,  make  but  the  single  word  bon  ?  He  has  been  made 
to  pronounce  three  sounds,  which  have  been  distinctly  impressed 
on  his  ear,  and  he  is  then  told  to  unite  these  three  sounds  and 
make  one  of  them,  namely,  bon.  And  Guyot  proposed,  in  order 
to  remedy  this  difficulty,  that  the  consonants  should  be  called 
only  by  their  natural  sounds,  by  merely  adding  the  silent  e,  which 
is  necessary  for  pronouncing  them."  2 

The  new  system  of  spelling,  then,  gives  to  the  letters  a 

1  M.  Buisson,  Rapport  sur  I' instruction  primaire  a  I'exposition  uni- 
versdle  de  Vienne,  1875. 

2  Grammaire  gtnfrale  de  Port  Royal,  Chap.  VL 


296  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

sound  which  more  nearly  approaches  their  relative  value. 
Besides,  it  decomposes  the  syllable  into  but  two  parts,  the 
sound  and  the  articulation,  without  taking  account  of  the 
number  of  letters  which  enter  into  the  composition  of  either. 
The  advantage  of  the  method  by  spelling  [alphabetic 
method]  is  that  it  is  a  good  preparation  for  the  study  of 
orthography.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  as  a  method  of  reading 
properly  so  called,  it  is  evidently  longer  and  more  difficult. 
But  nothing  prevents  us  from  returning  to  spelling  a  little 
later,  when  it  becomes  indispensable  for  the  study  of  or- 
thography, and  the  first  difficulties  have  been  overcome. 
Mr.  Bain  has  justly  remarked : 

"  Much  stress  is  now  laid  by  teachers  on  the  point  of  beginning 
to  pronounce  short  words  at  sight,  without  spelling  them,  and  a 
strong  condemnation  is  uttered  against  the  old  spelling  method. 
The  difference  between  the  methods  is  not  very  apparent  to  me  ; 
after  a  few  preliminary  steps,  the  two  must  come  to  the  same 
thing." 1 

306.  PHONETIC  METHODS.  —  But  there  has  become  popu- 
lar, particularly  in  Germany,  in  opposition  to  the  alphabetic 
method,  a  system  which  consists  in  making  the  pupil  grasp 
and  reproduce  the  sound  of  each  letter,  without  naming  the 
written  sign  which  represents  it.  From  this  principle  has 
sprung  a  great  number  of  different  methods,  all  of  which  are 
connected  with  the  idea  of  statilegie,  or  immediate  reading 
without  previous  spelling.2  These  are  also  called  methods 
by  syllabication,  because  they  present  to  the  pupil,  not  iso- 
lated letters,  but  syllables. 

Thus,  by  the  old  system  of  spelling,  the  word  infant  has 
six  elements,  i-n-f-a-n-t;  by  the  new  system  of  spelling  it 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  240. 

2  For  statilegie,  see  the  Dictionnaire  de  pedagogic,  article  Lafforte. 


READING  AND   WRITING.  297 

has  three  elements,  in-f-ant  ;  while  by  the  method  without 
spelling,  the  word  has  but  two  elements,  in-fant.1 

307.  SYNTHETIC  AND  ANALYTIC  METHODS.  —  Educators 
who  freely  use  and  abuse  the  words  analysis  and  synthesis, 
have  shown  no  anxiety  to  omit  these  favorite  expressions  in 
the  names  which  they  have  applied  to  the  different  systems 
of  reading ;  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  the  nature  of  the  subject 
would  here  justify,  more  than  anywhere  else,  the  use  of 
these  terms. 

A  word,  in  fact,  is  a  compound,  like  the  bodies  which 
chemistry  analyzes.  It  is  formed  of  elements,  which  are 
letters ;  so  that  by  analogy  with  methods  in  chemistry  it  is 
allowable  to  call  analytical  the  method  which  consists  in 
presenting  at  first  the  whole,  the  entire  word,  in  order  to 
decompose  it  into  its  elements  ;  and  to  call  synthetic  the  re- 
verse process,  which  first  requires  the  letters  to  be  leafned, 
in  order  to  form  syllables  of  them,  and  afterwards  to  con- 
struct words. 

It  is  in  this  sense  that  most  teachers  define  the  analytic 
and  synthetic  methods  of  reading. 

"The  analytic  method,"  says  M.  Homer,  "starts  from  the 
whole  in  order  to  reach  the  parts ;  it  drills  pupils  in  first  reading 
the  word  rose  as  a  whole,  then  by  syllables,  rose,  whence  it  de- 
scends to  the  ultimate  elements  of  this  word ;  that  is,  to  the  letters. 

"  The  synthetic  method  consists  in  starting  from  the  ultimate 
elements  of  words,  in  order  to  reach  the  syllables ;  from  syllables 
the  pupil  passes  to  words,  and  from  words  to  sentences."  a 

From  this  distinction  it  follows  that  the  so-called  synthetic 
method  corresponds  to  the  old  methods.  "The  analytic 

1  Jacotot,  instead  of  starting  with  the  letter  and  the  syllable,  starts 
with  the  word  as  a  whole.    See  J.  Jacotot  et  sa  Methode,  par  Perez,  p.  94. 

2  Mr.  Homer,  op.  cit.,  p.  Ill,  et  seg. 


298  PEACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

method,  on  the  contrary,"  says  M.  Horner,  "  almost  un- 
known in  French  schools,  is  universally  practised,  or  at 
least  recommended,  in  Germany  and  in  French  Switzer- 
land."1 

But  the  words  analysis  and  synthesis  are  so  very  ob- 
scure, and  so  difficult  to  handle,  that  a  French  educational 
authority,  M.  Brouard,  asserts,  to  the  contrary  effect,  that 
in  the  analytical  methods  we  decompose  the  syllable  into  all 
its  elements;  and  he  thus  confounds  them  with  the  "old 
methods."2  According  to  the  same  author,  the  synthetic 
method,  whose  essential  characteristic,  if  we  may  trust  the 
declarations  of  Swiss  and  Belgian  educators,  is  to  start 
from  the  simplest  element,  the  letter,  in  order  to  rise  to  the 
different  groups  which  constitute  syllables  and  words,  —  the 
synthetic  method  "should  not  decompose,  or  should  decom- 
pose as  little  as  possible." 

.  Perhaps  this  example  of  confusion  and  absolute  contradic- 
tion in  the  use  of  the  same  terms  will  finally  convince  our 
readers  that  it  would  be  best  to  renounce  forever,  in  the 
language  of  pedagogy,  those  fine  terms  analysis  and  syn- 
thesis. If,  however,  any  one  feels  bound  to  preserve  them, 
in  order  to  distinguish  the  different  procedures  followed  in 
the  study  of  reading,  we  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  only 
logical  signification  which  can  be  given  to  them  is  the  one 
from  Swiss  pedagogy  which  we  have  noted. 

308.  SIMULTANEOUS  TEACHING  OF  READING  AND  WRITING. 
—  It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  system  which  associates 
and  combines  the  teaching  of  reading  with  that  of  writing, 

1  This  is  also  a  prevailing  method  in  American  schools  of  the  better 
class.    See  Appendix  C.    (P.) 

2  Mr.  Brouard,  Inspection  des  e'coles  primaires,  p.  232.    M.  Guillaume 
in  the  Dictionnaire  de  pedagogic  says  to  the  contrary  and  with  reason, 
"  The  most  ancient  method  proceeded  by  synthesis." 


READING   AND   WRITING.  299 

and  attempts  to  facilitate  and  animate  each  by  the  other,  is 
anything  entirely  new.  In  his  Alphabet  pour  les  enfants 
(1750),  Delaunay  recommends  parents  "to  put  the  pen  in 
the  child's  hand  the  moment  he  begins  to  read."  Montaigne 
relates  that  he  was  taught  to  read  and  write  at  the  same 
time ;  and  Jacotot  also  associated  the  teaching  of  reading 
with  writing. 

But  it  is  chiefly  within  the  last  few  years  that  this  method 
has  gained  credit  and  reputation,  at  least  in  theory. 

"For  forty  years  past,"  says  a  German  educator,  "  there 
has  been  produced  but  one  review  article  in  favor  of  the 
old  systems  by  spelling  ;  but  notwithstanding  this,  the  alpha- 
betic method  is  still  taught  in  perhaps  half  the  schools  of 
Germany,  at  least  of  the  rural  schools."  1 

M.  Buisson  describes  this  process  as  follows: 

"  In  the  new  system  of  instruction,  a  pretty  little  illustrated  book 
is  given  the  child.  This  is  his  first  book,  and  yet  it  does  not  begin 
with  the  alphabet,  but  with  pictures,  as  of  a  wheel,  a  nest,  or  a  bat. 
Above  the  object  neatly  drawn  is  the  name,  written  in  large  letters ; 
it  is  always  a  short  and  easy  word,  such  as  Vogel  calls  a  normal 2 
word.  The  teacher  speaks  to  his  pupils  of  the  object  which  they  see 
before  them,  both  drawn  and  written ;  and  he  then  shows  them 
the  characters  used  to  write  the  name  of  that  object.  He  next 
writes  the  entire  word  on  the  board,  in  order  to  decompose  it  be- 
fore their  eyes,  and  make  them  pronounce  each  vowel  by  itself,  so 
as  to  show  them  how  the  consonants  modify  it ;  then  by  a  sort  of 
guess-work  he  sets  them  to  hunting  up  a  few  common  words  in 
which  are  found  the  same  sounds  and  consequently  the  same 
letters ;  and  finally  he  sets  them  to  looking  in  their  books,  here 
and  there,  for  characters  like  those  which  they  have  just  learned. 
This  is  the  use  that  is  made  of  the  ear  and  the  eye ;  that  of  the 
hand  is  its  immediate  complement,  and  very  often  the  beginning  is 

1  Quoted  by  M.  Buisson,  Rapport,  p.  156. 

2  Buisson,  Ibid.,  p.  154. 


300  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

made  with  this.  The  teacher  traces  upon  the  blackboard  a  few 
horizontal  and  vertical  lines,  and  teaches  the  children  a  small 
number  of  conventional  terms  which  he  will  have  need  to  use,  such 
as  above,  below,  to  the  right,  to  tie  left,  short,  long,  etc. ;  and  then, 
when  all  have  taken  the  pen  in  hand,  he  dictates  to  the  whole 
class  the  movements  to  be  made,  that  is,  the  lines  to  be  traced. 
The  pupils  thus  write  in  unison,  and,  as  it  were,  under  military 
orders.  This  curious  exercise  is  much  easier  for  them  than  for 
us  ;  first,  because  the  characters  of  the  German  running-hand  are 
almost  exclusively  rectilinear,  and  then  because  the  child  has  gen- 
erally been  prepared  in  the  Kindergarten  by  the  little  patterns  of 
Froebel,  so  that  for  him  writing  is  but  a  new  application  of  the 
same  exercises.  He  thus  learns  to  read  and  write  simultaneously, 
while  continuing  the  pattern  work  of  the  Kindergarten." l 

We  admire  the  ingenious  art  which  presides  over  the 
organization  of  such  a  scheme  of  instruction,  in  which  the 
work  of  the  hands  is  associated  with  the  exercise  of  hearing 
and  seeing  ;  in  which  the  effort  of  the  representative  imagi- 
nation, which  reading  involves,  is  aided  by  the  physical  ac- 
tivity which  is  required  by  the  practice  of  writing  ;  in  which 
writing  itself  is  facilitated  by  the  preparatory  exercises  in 
drawing,  and  in  which,  finally,  there  are  skillfully  connected 
with  the  study  of  language  signs  little  object-lessons, 
which  give  the  pupil  some  variety  and  some  attraction. 
One  might  be  very  glad  to  prefer  this  living  and  animated 
method  to  the  ordinary  processes  which  impose  on  the  child 
' '  an  endless  repetition  of  sounds  and  unions  of  sounds  which 
signify  nothing  to  the  mind,  and  a  pitiless  repetition  of 
those  monotonous  spelling  exercises  which  are  followed  by 
the  no  less  tedious  exercises  in  writing  on  slate  or  paper." 
Perhaps  the  day  will  come  when  this  ideal  method  will  be 
generally  practiced  in  our  schools  ;  but  we  see  what  efforts 
it  requires  on  the  part  of  the  teacher.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 

1  M.  Buisson,  Eapport,  p.  154. 


READING  AND   WRITING.  301 

the  general  characteristic  of  the  reforms  which  have  been 
suggested  to  the  art  of  teaching  by  the  modern  spirit  of 
innovation  and  progress  is  to  put  upon  the  teacher  all  the 
labor  from  which  the  pupil  has  been  relieved.  It  is  not  then 
to  be  expected  for  a  long  time  yet,  that  the  method  which 
we  have  just  described  can  be  made  general  in  our  public 
schools.  Let  it  be  added  that  whatever  effort  we  make, 
whatever  ingenious  invention  we  employ,  to  relieve  the  child, 
we  shall  never  succeed  in  suppressing  in  the  teaching  of 
reading  all  of  the  artificial  and  the  mechanical  that  is  in- 
volved in  it.  There  can  never  be  a  method  of  reading  per- 
fectly natural  and  rational,  for  the  excellent  reason  that 
letters  are  conventional  signs,  and  that  there  is  no  natural 
correspondence  between  these  signs  and  the  ideas  which 
they  express. 

309.  DIFFERENT  APPLICATIONS  OF  THIS  METHOD.  —  But 
theory  always  anticipates  practice,  at  least  customary  prac- 
tice, and  foreign  teachers  already  distinguish  two  different 
ways  of  applying  the  simultaneous  teaching  of  reading  and 
writing,  according  as  the  analytic  mode  or  the  synthetic 
mode  of  procedure  is  followed.  "We  shall  not  here  speak  of 
what  are  called  the  synthetic  method  and  the  analytico- synthetic 
method  of  script  reading.1  Let  us  simply  preserve  from  all 
these  tentatives  the  general  idea  which  dominates  them ; 
namely,  that  writing  being  relatively  easier  and  more  attrac- 
tive than  reading,  it  is  well  to  carry  on  these  two  exercises 
simultaneously.  Let  no  one  object  that  script  letters  are 
different  from  printed  letters.  All  who  have  taught  by  this 
method  are  unanimous  in  declaring  that  the  transition  from 
script  to  print  presents  no  difficulty  for  the  child ;  but  let  us 

1  On  this  subject  see  interesting  details  in  the  Rapport  of  M. 
Buisson,  already  noted. 


302  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

not  expect  that  the  child  will  learn  to  read  by  putting  into 
his  hands  the  pencil  or  the  pen. 

"The  fixing  of  the  visible  impressions  of  the  alphabet  is  has- 
tened if  the  pupil  is  sufficiently  advanced  in  the  power  of  the  hand 
to  draw  the  letters  with  chalk  or  with  slate  pencil."  1 

310.  ACCESSORY  PROCESSES.  —  What  adds  to  the  apparent 
multiplicity  of  methods   for  reading  is  the  accessory  pro- 
cesses which  have  been  added  to  them,  to  fix  and  sustain 
the  child's  attention.     Such  are  the  Gervais  system,  where 
sliding  cards  serve  to  group  the  letters  into  syllables ;  the 
Cheron  apparatus,  which   replaces  the  tapes  and  cards  by 
standards ;    the   Neel    charts,    which    simplify   the   use   of 
standards ;  the  Lambert  method,  where   of  two   concentric 
wheels  one  presents  the  articulations  and  the  other  the  sound  ; 
the  Maltre,  where  two  tapes  unroll  to  serve  the  same  pur- 
pose ;   the   Mignon   method,  which  employs  a  mural   chart 
with   movable  characters ;  the  Thollois  method,  which  is  a 
reproduction   of   the   typographic  cabinet  of  Dumas ; 2  the 
picture   methods  of  Regimbeau,  of   Larousse,  and  others. 
Such  again  is  the  Phonomimic  process. 

311.  PHONOMIMIC  PROCESS. — The  principle  of  this  proc- 
ess  is    not    new.      Coinenius    had   already   placed   at   the 
beginning  of  his  Orbis  Pictus  a  picture-alphabet,  in  which 
to  each  letter  there  corresponded  the  cry  of  an  animal,  or 
rather  a  sound  familiar  to  the  child.     This  is  the  same  idea 
which  inspires   the  phonomimic   process   of  M.   Grosselin, 
applied  by  Madame   Pape-Carpantier  in  her   spelling-book 
for  the  use  of  kindergartens.     Letters  of  the  alphabet  are 
there  associated  with  phonornrmic  gestures. 

1  Bain,  op.  tit.,  p.  238. 

2  See  Compayre's  History  of  Pedagogy,  p.  239. 


READING  AND  WRITING.  303 

312.  GENERAL  ADVICE.  —  Whatever  may  be  the  method 
employed,  the  teacher  should  be  anxious  above  all  else  to 
introduce  intelligence  and  life  into  the  reading  lesson.     Let 
him  not  call  into  play  merely  the  mechanical  memory  of  the 
child,  but  let  him  interest  his  other  faculties,  as  his  judg- 
ment and  his  imagination.     The  lesson  should   be   short,1 
interrupted  if  need  be  by  questions  to  animate  it  and  by 
diversions  to  make  it  pleasant.     Let  us  not  forget  that  read- 
ing is  the  child's  first  introduction  to  study,  to  school  work. 
Let  us  take  care  that  this  first  effort  be  not  too  difficult  for 
him,  and  that  he  be  not  forever  disgusted  with  study  by  his 
disagreeable  apprenticeship  to  reading. 

313.  FLUENT  AND  EXPRESSIVE  READING.  —  Fluent  read- 
ing is  one  of  the  most  important  exercises  of  the  primary 
school.     By  this  means,  in  fact,  the  child  not  only  becomes 
accustomed  to  overcome  the  difficulties  of  reading  proper, 
but  he   is   learning   his   native   language,    acquiring  useful 
knowledge,  and  taking  account  of  the  meaning  of  words. 

The  choice  of  a  good  book  for  fluent  reading  is  of  capital 
importance, — it  is  the  "walking-beam  of  the  school."  In 
making  use  of  the  books,  let  the  teacher  explain  in  advance 
the  subject  which  is  about  to  be  read,  and  carefully  illustrate 
all  the  terms  employed. 

"  The  reading  lesson,  with  explanations,"  says  an  Inspector- 
General,  "is  one  of  the  most  encouraging  signs  of  the  progress 
that  is  being  made  in  our  primary  instruction.  Doubtless  this 
explanation  is  often  dry,  confused*,  purely  grammatical,  lexicologi- 
cal; but  it  is  a  germ  which  will  develop  itself.  .  .  .  This  will 
be  the  most  living  and  vivifying  part  of  the  programme,  when  all 
teachers  have  comprehended  the  necessity  of  making  a  daily  and 
painstaking  preparation  for  it."  2 

1  M.  Rendu  admits  that  the  reading  lesson  may  be  without  incon- 
venience from  twenty  to  thirty  minutes. 

2  Buisson,  Rapport,  page  71. 


304  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

314.  EXPRESSIVE     READING.  —  "Expressive    reading," 
says   M.    Rousselot,    "  is   natural   reading,   whose   tone   is 
adapted  to  the  ideas  and  sentiments  expressed  in  the  selec- 
tion read."     Without  wishing  to  transform  our  schools  into 
conservatories  of  declamation,  there  is  ground  for  complaint 
that  teachers  generally  give  so  little  attention  to  the  art  of 
reading.     American  teachers  give  this  subject  much  more 
attention  when  they  require  "that  the  child  read  with  feel- 
ing, intelligence,  and  grace ;  that  he  understand  what  the 
author  intended  to  express ;  that  he  enter  into  the  spirit  of 
the  piece ;  and  that  he  have  the  command  of  his  voice." 

"  Every  teacher  should  be  a  good  reader.  Not  more  than  one  in 
every  hundred  among  teachers  can  now  be  called  a  good  reader."  1 

315.  CRITICAL  OBSERVATIONS  ON  THE  TEACHING  OF  READ- 
ING. —  We  borrow  from  the  Rapports  of  the  Inspectors-Gen- 
eral a  certain  number  of  critical  observations  gathered  from 
actual  practice,  which  mark  with  precision  some  of  the  most 
common  faults  in  the  teaching  of  reading : 

"  The  reading  exercise  is  not  made  intelligent  enough ;  the 
explanations  with  which  it  ought  to  be  accompanied  are  fre- 
quently lacking.  The  reading  is  heavy  and  monotonous.  The 
delivery  is  inarticulate,  dull,  and  confused.  The  teacher  does  not 
always  feel  himself  obliged  to  take  the  lead  in  reading  or  to  give 
a  model  for  imitation.  The  reading  lesson  is  but  a  mechanical 
exercise  which  leads  to  no  useful  results.  The  children  read 
poorly,  because  they  do  not  understand  what  they  read.  In  but 
few  schools  is  the  reading  expressive  and  well  explained.  Chil- 
dren seem  to  read  as  though  they  were  running  a  race ;  they  read 
for  the  sake  of  reading,  and  read  too  rapidly,  as  though  the  only 
purpose  were  to  limber  the  tongue  and  the  throat  of  the  pupil. 
Many  teachers  imagine  that  the  child  ought  to  write  only  when  he 
knows  how  to  read." 

1  Page,  Theory  and  Practice  of  Teaching,  1885,  p.  74. 


READING  AND   WRITING.  305 

316.  PROOFS  OF  PROGRESS. — By  the  side  of  the  faults 
just  pointed  out  let  us  place  the  commendations  given  to 
certain  schools   and  the   proofs   of   the   progress  that  has 
been  made  in  many  places : 

"  The  new  method  of  spelling  is  alone  in  use.  The  method  in 
use  is  becoming  more  rational,  and  the  process  less  mechanical. 
Writing  and  reading  taught  simultaneously  lend  each  other 
mutual  aid.  The  teaching  of  reading  and  writing  takes  place  at 
the  blackboard,  to  the  great  joy  of  the  children.  Mechanical 
reading  has  been  succeeded  by  reading  that  is  more  intelligent, 
better  understood,  explained  by  the  teacher,  and  often  summa- 
rized by  the  pupil.  Teachers  begin  to  understand  that  good  read- 
ing should  be  the  basis  of  all  other  work ;  some  make  a  careful 
preparation  for  each  lesson." 

317.  THE  TEACHING  OF  WRITING. — All  educators   are 
now  agreed  that  the  child  ought  to  be  drilled  in  writing  from 
the  moment  he  enters  school,  and  that  he  should  not  wait 
for  this  until  he  has  learned  to  read  fluently.     More  and 
more  the  truth  of  this  pedagogical  axiom  will  be  recognized, 
that  drawing,  writing,  and  reading  need  one  another  and  are 
mutually  helpful. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  useless  to  recollect  that  the 
writing  lesson  itself,  however  mechanical  it  may  be,  may 
become  for  the  teacher  an  occasion  for  calling  the  attention 
of  his  pupils  to  the  meaning  of  the  words  which  he  copies, 
and  to  the  moral  significance  of  the  sentences  which  he 
writes.  From  this  point  of  view,  the  choice  of  copies  pre- 
sented to  the  child  is  of  some  importance.1 

1  We  are  disposed  to  think  that  all  instruction  may  have  a  disci- 
plinary aim,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that  the  choice  of  copies  is  not 
an  indifferent  matter.  But  it  seems  to  us  an  exaggeration  to  admit, 
with  certain  teachers,  that  the  study  of  writing  can  develop  the  aes- 
thetic sense,  and  consequently  can  exercise  a  salutary  influence  on 
the  moral  nature  and  train  the  judgment. 


306  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

318.  DIFFERENT  PROCESSES. — Properly  speaking,  there 
are  no  distinct  methods  for  teaching  writing  ;  there  are  only 
different  processes.  The  principal  are  the  use  of  tracing- 
copies,  the  imitation  of  models,  and  prepared  copy-books. 
It  is  astonishing  that  certain  teachers  still  recommend  trac- 
ing-copies and  the  use  of  black  lines.  This  is  the  case  with 
M.  Rendu,  who  is  very  willing  to  acknowledge,  however, 
that  the  practice  should  be  at  once  abandoned  the  moment 
the  child  has  become  somewhat  accustomed  to  write. 

The  imitation  of  models  leaves  the  child  to  his  own 
powers,  and  at  first  constitutes,  perhaps,  an  exercise  that  is 
too  difficult.  As  soon  as  possible,  however,  there  must  be 
a  resort  to  this  process,  either  by  presenting  the  pupil  with 
copies  upon  paper  or  by  tracing  letters  and  words  upon  the 
blackboard,  —  a  practice  which  has  this  advantage,  among 
others,  of  facilitating  collective  teaching. 

Prepared  copy-books,  where  the  child  at  first  has  but  to 
make  traces,  but  where  the  guiding  lines  become  more  and 
more  rare  in  proportion  as  the  pupil  advances,  are  the 
method  which  is  best  adapted  to  the  inexperience  of  begin- 
ners. This  system  is  a  combination  of  tracing  and  imita- 
tion, the  one  which  is  recommended  by  the  Conduite  des 
ecoles  chretiennes.  This  may  at  once  be  admitted,  on  con- 
dition .that  we  do  not  prolong  too  far  this  over-agreeable 
exercise.  "The  pupil,"  says  M.  Berger,  "ought  as  soon 
as  possible  to  be  drilled  in  freely  imitating  the  copies  and 
in  accustoming  himself  somewhat  to  walk  without  leading- 
strings." 

In  the  teaching  of  writing  another  difference  comes  from 
the  use  of  slate  and  pencil,  or  of  paper  and  pen.  Pestalozzi, 
who  made  writing  subordinate  to  drawing,  strongly  recom- 
mended the  use  of  the  slate,  because  the  child  handles  the 
pencil  more  easily  than  the  pen,  and  because  upon  the  slate 
he  more  easily  effaces  his  mistakes.  On  the  other  hand, 


READING  AND  WRITING.  307 

M.  Brouard  remarks  that  the  slate,  "the  paper  of  the  poor," 
is  never  more  than  an  expedient,  and  that  its  use  makes  the 
hand  awkward  and  stiffens  the  fingers. 

319.  CONDITIONS    NECESSARY  FOR  LEARNING  TO  WRITE 
WELL. — Power    of    representative    imagination,    a    clear, 
exact,  and  complete  conception  of  the  forms  to  be  traced, 
is  one  of  the    conditions   necessary  for  learning  to  write. 
Another    condition   is   that    deftness   of   the    hand    which 
is  in  part  natural,  but  which  is  also  acquired  by  sufficient 
exercise,  and  precautions  that  may  be  taken  to  secure  a  cor- 
rect position  of  the  body  and  a  proper  holding  of  the  pen. 

According  to  the  Manuel  of  M.  Rendu,  the  elements  of  a 
correct  position  for  writing  are  the  following  : 

"  The  body  straight,  perpendicular,  upon  the  bench  as  one  sits  at 
table ; 

"  The  limbs  advanced,  not  crossed  nor  bent  backward ; 

"The  left  arm  oblique  upon  the  table,  supporting  the  body,  the 
hand  flat-wise,  the  fingers  upon  the  copy-book  to  adjust  it  prop- 
erly; 

"  The  copy-book  a  little  inclined  to  the  left ; 

"The  right  arm  free  in  its  movements,  about  two-thirds  upon 
the  table,  separated  from  the  body  by  a  hand-breadth  ; 

"The  pen  between  the  first  three  fingers,  extended  without 
being  rigid ; 

"  The  right  hand  bent  neither  upward  nor  downward,  supported 
only  by  the  extremities  of  the  third  and  fourth  fingers,  bent 
inward  in  such  a  way  that  the  pen  points  toward  the  shoulder ; 

"  Finally,  the  head  bent  a  little  forward,  but  only  enough  for 
seeing  clearly." 

320.  GENERAL  ADVICE.  — The  teaching  of  writing  should 
not  be   considered  as  a  mechanical   exercise  for  which  it 
suffices  that  the  pupil    should    have   a  copy-book.      The 
teacher  ought  constantly  to  supervise   this  work,  and  the 
following  are  some  of  the  rules  to  which  he  should  conform : 


308  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

The  penmanship  of  the  teacher  should  not  only  be  good, 
but  he  should  also  have  the  ability  to  write  upon  the  black- 
board. 

Preparation  should  be  made  for  the  writing  lesson  as  for 
other  lessons. 

Abuse  must  not  be  made  of  caligraphic  exercises  and  of 
mechanical  copying. 

All  the  exercises  in  arithmetic,  composition,  and  espe- 
cially in  dictation,  ought  to  be  exercises  in  flowing  and 
legible  penmanship. 

The  teacher  ought  not  to  take  part  in  the  writing  exercises 
while  seated  at  his  desk ;  after  having  given  his  lesson  on 
the  blackboard,  he  ought  to  pass  from  seat  to  seat  to  direct 
his  pupils,  to  observe  the  position  of  body,  hand,  and  pen, 
to  correct  faults  and  to  re-form  letters  that  are  badly  made. 

"In  teaching  writing,  teachers  should  not  attempt  to  train 
skilful  professors  of  caligraphy,  but  to  prepare  children  for  writing 
rapidly  and  legibly." 

We  cannot  too  carefully  proscribe  all  vain  caligraphic 
refinements,  puerile  masterpieces  of  penmanship,  pen-draw- 
ings which  are  designed  only  for  ornament. 

321.  PRACTICAL  OBSERVATIONS  ON  THE  TEACHING  OF 
WRITING. — The  following  are  some  observations  contained 
in  the  Rapports  of  the  Inspectors-General,  touching  the 
teaching  of  writing : 

"  The  slate,  that  simple  means  of  giving  children  occupation,  is 
rarely  utilized.  The  teacher,  instead  of  placing  the  copy  upon  the 
blackboard  for  the  whole  class,  prefers  to  give  a  ready-made  copy. 
Penmanship  is  rarely  made  a  specialty.  The  teacher  does  not 
take  the  trouble  to  examine -and  correct  the  books.  There  will 
never  be  visible  progress  in  writing  while  the  teacher  does  not 
take  upon  himself  the  task  of  passing  from  seat  to  seat  during  the 


READING  AND   WRITING.  309 

lesson,  to  go  from  pupil  to  pupil,  to  observe  the  position  of  the 
body  and  the  holding  of  the  pen,  —  in  a  word,  to  see  how 
the  children  follow  their  copies,  and  to  correct  before  their  eyes 
letters  which  seem  defective." 

322.  CONCLUSION.  —  From  what  has  preceded,  it  follows 
that  in  the  teaching  of  reading  and  writing,  those  two 
fundamental  branches  of  all  elementary  instruction,  proc- 
esses that  are  intelligent  and  attractive  are  more  and  more 
replacing  routine  and  mechanical  processes.  Writing  and 
reading  ought  not  to  be  abandoned  to  the  hazards  of  a 
monotonous  spelling  or  of  an  insipid  exercise  in  copying  ; 
they  ought  to  be  professionally  taught,  as  essential  elements 
in  the  study  of  the  mother-tongue. 


CHAPTER    III. 

OBJECT-LESSONS. 

323.  ORIGIN  OP  OBJECT-LESSONS.  —  To-day  everybody 
talks  about  object-lessons,  and  all  teachers  pretend  to  give 
them ;  but  thirty  years  ago  the  term  was  unknown,  at  least 
in  France,  and  the  repute  of  this  mode  of  teaching  is  due 
to  an  entirely  new  phase  of  opinion. 

The  object-lesson  is  the  application  of  the  principle  which 
Rousseau  and  Pestalozzi  have  popularized ;  namely,  that  in 
instruction  things  must  come  before  words,  and  that  the 
senses,  particularly  the  sense  of  sight,  are  the  faculties 
which  are  first  developed,  and  that  it  is  to  them  that  we 
must  make  the  first  appeal. 

From  another  point  of  view,  the  introduction  of  object- 
lessons  into  the  programme  of  school  studies  is  the  result 
of  that  modern  tendency  which  more  and  more  impels 
teachers  to  develop  the  educative  character  of  instruction. 
In  fact,  the  object-lesson  is  worth  less  for  the  knowledge 
which  it  communicates  than  for  the  manner  in  which  it  is 
communicated,  for  the  effect  it  produces  on  the  faculties  of 
observation  and  attention,  for  the  interest  which  it  seeks  to 
create  by  presenting  to  the  pupil  familiar  notions  accessible 
to  his  intelligence,  and  by  keeping  his  mind  on  things  which 
he  already  knows  in  part,  and  which  we  wish  to  have  him 
know  still  better. 

Let  us  first  attempt  to  define  with  exactness  the  meaning 
which  it  is  proper  to  attach  to  the  expression  object-lessons; 
310 


OBJECT-LESSONS.  311 

and  we  shall  then  inquire  how  that  instruction  ought  to  be 
administered,  and  on  what  conditions  it  can  bear  all  its  fruit. 

324.  MISUNDERSTANDINGS  AS  TO  THE  MEANING  OF  THE 
TERM. — The  object-lesson  has  had  the  same  fate  as  the 
so-called  intuitive  method ;  these  expressions  have  been 
used  at  random  to  designate  scholastic  processes  which 
have  only  a  remote  relation  to  them.  Like  all  novelties, 
"object-lesson"  has  become  a  beautifully  vague  term,  which 
each  one  interprets  in  his  own  way. 

"  A  long  observation  of  school  affairs,"  says  Mile.  Chalamet, 
"  has  convinced  us  that  if  one  does  not  wish  to  be  understood,  he 
has  no  surer  means  than  to  speak  of  object-lessons.  There  are 
certainly  but  few  questions  in  teaching  of  the  practical  sort,  which 
give  occasion  for  such  strange  misconceptions.  Not  very  long  ago, 
while  speaking  with  one  of  the  professors  in  a  large  school,  we 
asked  him  if  many  object-lessons  were  given  in  his  class.  '  We 
make  use  of  them  constantly,'  he  replied;  '  we  give  our  pupils 
explanations  on  all  subjects.'  In  fact,  while  industriously  observ- 
ing the  work  of  this  professor  for  a  considerable  time,  we  became 
convinced  that  for  him  object-lessons  consisted  in  pouring  forth 
floods  of  verbal  explanations."  l 

It  is  in  part  to  Madame  Pape-Carpantier  that  must  be 
attributed  the  responsibility  for  this  misleading  extension 
of  the  meaning  of  object-lessons.  The  models  she  has  left 
us  give  proof  of  ingenious  invention  and  exquisite  tact ;  but 
they  also  prove  that  the  object-lesson  was  for  her  a  sort 
of  encyclopaedic  process,  and  that  she  applied  it  to  every 
branch  of  instruction  as  a  sort  of  common  mould  into  which 
everything  was  to  be  forced.2 

"  The  object-lesson,"  she  said,  "  teaches  of  realities  themselves, 
and  from  every  reality  it  produces  useful  knowledge  and  noble 
sentiment." 

1  Mile.  Chalamet,  op.  cit.,  p.  90. 

2  Madame  Pape-Carpantier,  Conferences  faites  a  to  Sorbonne  en  1867. 


312  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

325.  DEFINITION  OF  OBJECT-LESSON.  — One  of  the  best 
definitions  which  have  been  given  of  object-lessons  is  the 
one  that  we  borrow  from  Mr.  Bain,  who  has  written  on  this 
subject  one  of  the  most  remarkable  chapters  of  his  Educa- 
tion as  a  Science. 

"  The  object-lesson  is  made  to  range  over  all  the  utilities  of 
life  and  all  the  processes  of  nature.  It  begins  upon  things  famil- 
iar to  the  pupils,  and  enlarges  the  conceptions  of  these  by  filling 
in  unnoticed  qualities.  It  proceeds  to  things  that  have  to  be 
learnt,  even  in  their  primary  aspect,  by  description  or  diagram ; 
and  ends  with  the  more  abstruse  operations  of  natural  forces."  * 

In  its  last  part,  Mr.  Bain's  definition  is  itself  a  little  too 
broad,  since  it  tends  to  embrace  the  highest  departments  of 
the  physical  sciences.  We  are  firm  in  the  belief  that  the 
object-lesson  ought  to  be  merely  a  beginning  instrument, 
and  that  it  should  not  be  continued  to  the  last  stage  of  in- 
struction. On  this  point  we  do  not  share  the  opinion  of  Mr. 
Spencer,  who  would  have  the  object-lesson  so  conducted  in 
the  earlier  stages  of  instruction  that  it  could  merge  insen- 
sibly into  the  investigation  of  the  naturalist  and  the  man  of 
science.2 

Here  a  few  other  definitions  that  may  serve  to  enlighten 
us  on  the  nature  and  purpose  of  object-lessons : 

"  The  professed  purpose  of  object-lessons,"  says  Mr.  Spencer, 
"  is  to  give  the  child  the  habit  of  thorough  observation.  .  .  .  The 
object-lesson  is  a  process  of  instruction,  one  of  the  applications  of 
the  intuitive  method."  3 

"  Object-lessons  may  be  defined  as  lessons  designed  to  teach  the 
elements  of  knowledge  by  the  use  of  objects."  4 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  247. 

2  Education,  p.  136. 

8  M.  Platrkr,  Lecons  de  choses  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  p€dagogie. 
*  Wickersham,  Methods  of  Instruction,  p.  141. 


OBJECT-LESSONS.  313 

Johonnot,  an  American  teacher,  sharply  contrasts  object 
lessons  with  formal  memory  exercises. 

"  The  decided  superiority  of  the  new  method  over  the  old,  in 
arousing  attention  and  in  exciting  interest,  is  manifest.  The  new 
instruction  appeals  to  experience  and  excites  the  observing  powers 
to  intense  activity.  It  feeds  the  mind  upon  real  knowledge,  and 
raises  it  out  of  the  slough  of  inattention  and  listless  inactivity 
produced  by  the  old  process  of  mere  routine."  1 

In  fact,  the  object-lesson  is  directly  opposed  to  text-book 
instruction.  It  results  from  the  reaction,  excessive  it  must 
be  admitted,  which  modern  education  has  directed  against 
instruction  purely  livresque,  as  Montaigne  called  it. 

326.  ABUSE  OF  OBJECT-LESSONS. — It  may  be  said  in  a 
sense  that  object-lessons  have  been  too  successful,  that 
people  have  been  carried  away  by  them,  and  that  they  have 
come  near  being  brought  into  disrepute  by  the  abuse  which 
has  been  made  of  them.  Besides  being  cried  up  with  exces- 
sive enthusiasm,  they  have  been  indiscriminately  applied  to 
all  branches  of  instruction.  There  have  been  object-lessons 
in  morals  and  in  history ;  and  they  have  been  confounded 
with  the  experiments  and  demonstrations  of  science. 

It  is  in  this  sense  that  Madame  Pape-Carpantier  said : 

"  The  man  of  science  in  his  amphitheatre  gives  an  object-lesson 
when  he  performs  before  the  very  eyes  of  his  pupils  the  delicate 
and  brilliant  operations  with  which  he  entertains  them." 

The  object-lesson,  as  its  name  indicates,  ought  to  be  kept 
within  the  domain  of  knowledge  where  we  have  actually  to 
deal  with  things  which  can  be  shown,  with  sensible  objects 
which  strike  the  eyes  of  the  child. 

But  at  most  it  is  and  can  be  but  an  elementary  initiation 

r— — — — — •  ~~  •  — 

1  Jobonuot,  Principles  and  Practice  of  Teaching,  p.  84, 


314  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

into  knowledge  of  this  sort ;  it  ought  never  to  take  the  form 
of  a  didactic  lesson. 

327.  THE  NEW  FORMALISM. — The  object-lesson  is  noth- 
ing if  not  a  living  method  of  teaching,  in  which  the  teacher 
gives  proof  of  sagacity  and  invention  ;  in  which  he  arranges, 
always  with  freedom,  and  if  possible  with  originality,  the 
common  information  which  he  wishes  to  communicate  to 
his  pupils ;  in  which  he  intersperses  his  exposition  with 
interrogations,  and  in  which  he  makes  a  constant  appeal  to 
the  child's  initiative  by  taking  advantage  of  circumstances, 
such  as  the  replies  which  are  made  to  his  questions. 

But  the  formal  and  scholastic  spirit  always  asserts  itself, 
and  object-lessons,  imperfectly  understood,  very  soon  be- 
come a  new  piece  of  school  mechanism. 

It  is  thus  that  many  school-books,  through  a  curious  mis- 
conception, are  entitled  "Object-lessons."  It  has  become 
the  custom,  in  some  primary  schools,  to  dictate  object- 
lessons  ;  and  the  degeneration  has  gone  even  further  than 
this.1 

"  To  read  an  object-lesson  is  bad  enough,  but  there  is  something 
worse,  and  we  have  seen  one  played.  It  was  at  a  health-resort, 
and  the  watering-place  had  a  school.  One  Sunday  the  directors 
invited  the  guests  to  witness  the  distribution  of  prizes.  There 
was  a  programme  for  the  occasion,  and  this  programme  promised, 
among  other  things,  the  representation  of  an  object-lesson !  In 
fact,  two  little  girls  appeared  on  the  platform,  one  of  whom  was 
the  mistress  and  the  other  her  pupil ;  and  they  proceeded  to  recite 
with  volubility  an  object-lesson  in  the  form  of  a  dialogue."  2 

1  "  No  object-lesson,"  said  Johonnot,  "  should  be  given  from  a  book. 
The  very  name  of  the  exercise  would  seem  to  be  sufficient  to  render 
this  rule  unnecessary;  but  there  have  been  teachers  so  profoundly 
stupid  as  to  oblige  pupils  to  commit    to  memory  the  model  lessons 
given  in  manuals  of  teaching."    (Op.  cit.,  pp.  91,  92.) 

2  Mile.  Chalamet,  op.  cit. 


OBJECT-LESSONS.  315 

328.  DIFFERENT  FORMS  OF  OBJECT-LESSONS.  —  After  hav- 
ing attempted  to  define  the  essential  characteristics  of  every 
object-lesson,  we  must  hasten  to  note  the  fact  "that  there  are 
different  ways  of  applying  this  educational  process. 

Mr.  Bain  distinguishes  three  principal  forms  of  the 
object-lesson. 

1.  The  object-lesson  may  consist  in  placing  a  concrete 
object  before  the  eyes  of  the  pupil  as  a  type,  in  order  to 
have  him  grasp  an  abstract  idea.     For  example,  four  apples, 
or  four  nuts,  are  presented  to  the  pupil  in  order  to  develop 
in  him  the  concept  of  the  number  four. 

2.  The  object-lesson  may  consist  in  calling  into  play  the 
five  senses,  as  by  making  the  pupil  see,  touch,  and  observe 
the  qualities  of  certain  objects.     In  this  form,  the  object- 
lesson  is  but  the  education  of  the  senses. 

3.  Finally,  the  object-lesson  may  be  employed  to  increase 
the  number  of   conceptions,   to  make  the  pupil   acquire  a 
knowledge  of  objects,  facts,  and  realities,  formed  by  nature 
or  by  human  art.     It   is   this  feature  which  is  commonly 
expressed   by  saying   that   the   object-lesson   cultivates   or 
develops  the  faculty  of  conception  and  imagination. 

"Basing  upon  what  the  child  already  knows  and  conceives, 
unknown  objects  may  be  pictured  forth,  and  so  laid  hold  of,  as 
permanent  imagery  for  after  uses.  It  is  thus  that  children  may 
be  made  to  conceive  in  a  dim  form  the  camel  of  the  desert,  the 
palm-tree,  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt."  1 

329.  THE  PROPER  DOMAIN  OF  OBJECT-LESSONS. — If  we  are 
to  believe  American  teachers,  object-lessons  have  an  unlimited 
field  of  application,  —  as  unlimited  as  nature  itself.     They 
may  be  extended  even   to  history,2   and   applied   to   ideal 

1  Bain,  op.  cit.,  p.  256. 

2  Wickersbam,  op.  cit.,  p.  144. 


316  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

things  as  well  as  to  material  objects.  "In  its  enlarged 
sense,"  says  Wickersham,  "  the  term  object  means  anything 
to  which  thought  is  or  may  be  directed."  There  might, 
then,  be  object-lessons  even  in  psychology. 

Mr.  Bain  more  wisely  limits  the  domain  of  object-lessons 
to  sensible  objects  alone. 

"  The  object-lesson  introduces  the  pupil  to  three  great  fields,  — 
Natural  History,  Physical  Science,  and  the  useful  arts,  or  common 
utilities  of  every-day  life." 1 

We  agree  with  the  English  educator,  that  the  domain  of 
object-lessons  is  necessarily  restricted  to  the  sciences,  or 
rather  to  the  familiar  and  ordinary  subjects  of  knowledge, 
which  relate  directly  to  things  that  can  be  seen  and  touched. 
History,  grammar,  the  abstract  sciences,  such  as  arithmetic 
and  the  moral  sciences,  must  be  strictly  excluded. 

330.  THEIR  TRUE  CHARACTER. — That  which  finally  dis- 
tinguishes the  object-lesson  is  not  merely  the  nature  of  the 
objects  to  which  it  is  applied,  but  the  manner  in  which  it  is 
given.  It  ought  not  to  have  the  didactic  character  of  con- 
secutive exposition,  but  it  ought  to  be  given  always  in  the 
conversational  form. 

Mr.  Spencer  justly  complains  that  in  the  manuals  of 
object-lessons  there  is  given  a  long  list  of  the  things  which 
are  to  be  told  to  the  child.  According  to  him,  the  child 
must  be  merely  provoked  to  discover  these  things  by  his  own 
observation.  In  the  object-lesson  it  is  chiefly  the  child  that 
ought  to  speak. 

"  We  must  listen  to  all  the  child  has  to  tell  us  about  each  ob- 
ject, must  induce  it  to  say  everything  it  can  think  of  about  such 
object,  must  occasionally  draw  its  attention  to  facts  it  has  not  yet 

1  Bain,  op.  cit.,  p.  249. 


OBJECT-LESSONS.  31 7 

observed,  with  the  view  of  leading  it  to  notice  them  itself  when- 
ever they  recur,  and  must  go  on  by  and  by  to  indicate  or  supply 
new  series  of  things  for  a  like  exhaustive  examination."  1 

The  object-lesson  ought  to  be  a  transition  from  maternal 
instruction  to  school  instruction  proper,  an  initiation  into 
certain  studies,  and  not  a  general  method. 

The  teacher  is  here  less  a  professor  who  sets  forth  what 
he  knows,  than  one  who  stimulates  the  intelligence.  This  is 
why  we  do  not  think,  Mr.  Spencer  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing, that  the  object-lesson  should  be  continued  beyond 
the  first  years  of  school  instruction.  The  object-lesson 
greatly  promotes  a  knowledge  of  material  things,  and 
chiefly  develops  the  faculty  of  sensible  observation.  Now, 
in  the  work  of  instruction  it  is  necessary  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible to  dispense  with  concrete  and  material  things  in  order 
resolutely  to  throw  the  child  into  the  domain  of  abstract 
and  general  ideas.  Of  course,  in  the  teaching  of  history  and 
number,  and  in  the  higher  instruction  in  the  physical  and 
natural  sciences,  the  teacher  is  not  forbidden  to  appeal  to 
the  child's  imagination  and  to  sensible  representations  ;  it  is 
even  necessary  to  do  this  on  occasion.  But  this  will  be  only 
an  accident,  an  exception,  at  most  a  special  element  in  the 
lesson.  This  appeal  to  experience  will  no  longer  constitute 
an  object-lesson  properly  so-called. 

331.  RULES  FOR  OBJECT-LESSONS. — From  the  fact  that 
the  object-lesson  is  above  all  else  a  free  and  familiar  con- 
versation of  the  teacher  with  his  pupils,  it  must  not  be 
inferred  that  it  has  no  rules  and  principles. 

"On  the  contrary,"  says  Madame  Pape-Carpantier,  "  it  has  fixed 
rules  which  are  independent  of  the  fancy  of  teachers.  ...  Its 
principles  and  rules  are  the  same  as  those  which  govern  the  oper- 
ations of  the  human  understanding." 

1  Spencer,  op.  dt.,  pp.  133,  134. 


318  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

The  first  of  these  rules  is  that  each  lesson  should  have  a 
definite  purpose,  its  determined  scope. 

"  The  teacher,"  adds  Mr.  Bain,  "  should  consider  what  is  to  be 
the  drift  of  the  lesson.  That  at  the  outset  lessons  are  more  or  less 
desultory,  perhaps  cannot  be  helped ;  but  they  should  gradually  be 
brought  under  some  of  the  '  Unities.'  " 

332.  THE  NECESSITY  OF  A  SYSTEMATIC  PLAN.  —  It  is  not 
only  necessary  that   each   lesson   should   have   its  definite 
purpose,  but  also  that  the  successive  object-lessons  should 
be  connected  and,  so  to  speak,  brought  into  proper  subor- 
dination.    Object-lessons  would  be  a  chaos  of  sterile  con- 
versations and  profitless  talk,  if  they  were  disconnected  and 
were  to  proceed  at  random  in  the  vast  field  which  is  open  to 
them. 

"  Object-lessons  should  be  given  in  a  systematic  course,  each  one 
conveying  its  own  teaching  and  bearing  some  palpable  relation  to 
the  one  that  has  preceded  and  the  one  that  follows,  thus  leading 
the  pupil  to  the  discovery  of  the  relations,  and  enabling  him  to 
associate  them  in  memory.  Desultory  object-lessons  are  of  little 
worth."  1 

333.  PREPARATION    OP    OBJECT-LESSONS. — A   thing   not 
less  necessary  is  that  each  lesson  should  be  carefully  pre- 
pared.    Nothing  should  be  left  to  chance  in  these  familial- 
conversations,  and  the  teacher  should  be  all  the  more  pre- 
pared on  all  tne  parts  of   his  subject,   as  an   unexpected 
question  asked  by  his  pupils  might  surprise  and  disconcert 
him. 

"  Object-lessons  demand  such  a  studied  preparation,  such  a  pro- 
found knowledge  of  the  subject,  so  much  tact  and  intelligence,  and 
finally  such  a  judiciously  arranged  collection  of  objects,  that  this 
kind  of  instruction  has  not  yet  gained  a  foothold  in  the  schools. 

1  Johonnot,  op.  cit.,  p.  92. 


OBJECT-LESSORS.  319 

Much  has  been  said  about  them  in  scholastic  circles,  and  some 
teachers  even  pride  themselves  that  they  have  been  successful  in 
their  use ;  but  up  to  the  present  time  they  can  be  credited  only 
with  good  intentions."  1 

334.  ORDER  TO  BE  FOLLOWED  IN  STUDYING  THE  QUALITIES 
OF   OBJECTS. — Madame   Pape-Carpantier   thought   it   very 
important   that   in   observing   the   qualities   of   objects  we 
should  restrict  ourselves  to  an  invariable  order,  derived,  as 
she  claimed,  from  the  natural  course  which  the  mind  fol- 
lows in  its  perceptions.     It  would  be  necessary,  on  this  hy- 
pothesis, to  proceed  always  in  the  same  manner  and  to  call 
the  child's  attention  successively  to  the  color,  the  form,  the 
use,. and  the  matter  or  constituent  elements  of  the  object 
studied.     Mr.  Bain  is  not  of  this  opinion. 

"  The  most  useful  direction  for  conducting  it  is,  first,  to  point 
out  the  appearance  or  sensible  qualities  of  an  object,  and  next  to 
specify  its  uses.  A  better  rule  would  be,  to  give  the  uses  first 
(after  the  most  obvious  aspects) ;  use  is  quality  in  act,  and  our 
interest  in  things  is  first  excited  by  their  active  agency."  2 

And  taking  glass  as  an  example,  Mr.  Bain  remarks  that  it 
is  useless  to  say  to  pupils  that  it  is  hard,  smooth,  and  trans- 
parent, —  things  which  they  already  very  well  know.  That 
which  will  interest  them,  on  the  contrary,  and  that  which 
will  instruct  them,  will  be  to  lead  them  to  reflect  on  the 
different  uses  of  glass,  and  perhaps  also  on  the  various 
circumstances  of  its  discovery  or  on  its  history. 

335.  SCHOOL   MUSEUM. — Object-lessons  require  the   or- 
ganization in  the  school  of  little  school  museums,  where  the 
teacher  may  find  within  his  reach  the  objects  which  are  to 
serve  as  a  text  for  his  lesson. 

1  Rapports  et  inspection  generate,  1870-1880,  p.  210. 
8  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  249. 


320  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

These  museums  ought  in  great  part  to  be  constructed  by 
the  pupils  themselves. 

"  Children  are  asked,  for  example,  to  bring  on  the  morrow 
leaves  of  two  trees  which  they  have,  perhaps,  never  thought  of  dis- 
tinguishing, as  the  pear  and  the  apple,  the  pine  and  the  fir,  or  cer- 
tain species  of  the  poplar ;  or  such  a  stone  or  mineral,  or  specimen 
of  wood,  or  such  a  manufactured  product  as  is  found  in  the  coun- 
try, but  which  is  lacking  in  the  little  school  museum.  Something 
ought  always  to  be  wanting  in  a  school  museum,  and  it  would  not 
displease  me  to  be  told  that  each  generation  of  scholars  is  obliged 
to  reconstruct  it,  so  to  speak,  anew  by  its  own  researches.  The 
great  profit  {o  be  derived  from  these  little  museums  of  object- 
lessons  does  not  consist  in  having  them,  but  in  making  them." 

"  The  school  museum,"  says  M.  Cocheris,  to  the  same  effect^  "  is 
the  work  of  time,  and  ought  to  contain  samples  of  the  local  indus- 
try and  specimens  of  the  natural  products  which  contribute  to  the 
wealth  of  the  country." 

Complaint  is  sometimes  made,  and  not  without  reason, 
that  in  certain  schools  the  school  museums  assume  exagger- 
ated proportions.  It  is  not  the  purpose,  in  fact,  to  bring 
together  a  collection  of  curiosities,  or  to  establish  a  showy 
museum  filled  with  useless  articles  designed  to  strike  the 
imagination  of  visitors  to  the  school ;  but  to  collect,  in  order 
to  make  use  of  them,  the  objects  which  may  really  con- 
tribute to  the  instruction  of  the  child.  The  best  museum  is 
not  that  where  the  most  specimens  are  pressed  into  elegant 
show-cases,  but  that  of  which  the  most  use  is  made. 

But,  generally  speaking,  such  museums  do  not  exist  in 
our  schools,  or  exist  only  in  an  embryonic  state. 

"  School  museums  develop  but  slowly.  What  is  easier,  however, 
than  to  collect  from  the  grocer,  the  apothecary,  the  seedsman,  the 
druggist,  from  field  and  garden,  the  elements  of  a  useful  collec- 
tion? 

"When  they  exist,  people  do  not  know  how  to  make  use  of  them. 
The  specimens  generally  disappear  under  a  thick  coating  of  dust." 


OBJECT-LESSONS.  321 

336.  PRINCIPAL   MISTAKES  TO  BE   AVOIDED. — But  what 
is  still  much  more  important  than  the  material  conditions  of 
the  object-lesson,  conditions  supplied  by  the  school  museum, 
is  the  manner  in  which  the  teacher  interprets  this  exercise. 

By  reason  of  the  very  liberty  which  characterizes  this 
mode  of  teaching,  the  object-lesson  is  a  delicate  thing  to 
administer;  and  a  great  number  of  faults  and  of  possible 
inconveniences  ought  to  be  noted  and  shunned. 

337.  SUPERFLUITY    OF    OBJECT-LESSONS.  —  Object-lessons 
like  those  which  are  sometimes  given  are  certainly  super- 
fluous.    They  squander  precious  time,  as  Mr.  Bain  observes, 
on  things  children  already  know  or  which  they  might  learn 
of  themselves,  either  by  their  personal  observation  or  by 
conversations  with  their  parents  or  their  companions. 

We  recall  the  tiresome  exercises  which  Pestalozzi  im- 
posed on  his  pupils  before  the  old  paper-hangings  of  the 
school-room :  There  is  a  hole  in  the  hangings.  The  hole  in 
the  hangings  is  round,  etc.  "How  many  object-lessons  which 
are  thus  but  a  sterile  verbiage,  in  which  children  are  taught 
by  many  repetitions  that  snow  is  white,  that  ink  is  black, 
that  glass  is  transparent,  that  a  bird  has  two  claws  and  one 
head,  that  a  horse  has  two  eyes,  two  ears,  and  four  legs, 
etc. ! " 

338.  WORDS  WITHOUT  THINGS. — The  object-lesson,  im- 
perfectly understood,  has  sometimes  become  a  purely  verbal 
exercise.     Pestalozzi,  one  of  the  first  who  made  use  of  it, 
employed  it  as  a  means  of  teaching  the  exact  meanings  of 
words.     His  exercises  in  intuition  were  chiefly  exercises  in 
language.     It  is  certainly  a  good  and  useful  thing  to  asso- 
ciate with  exercises  in  observation  a  drill  in  language.     But 
with  respect  to  the  object  which   is  shown  the   child,  and 
under  a  pretext  of  analyzing  its  qualities,  we  must  be  strictly 


322  PRACTICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

on  our  guard  against  making  use  of  technical  and  scientific 
terms  whose  meaning  he  is  incapable  of  comprehending. 
As  some  one  has  said,  one  single  recommendation  compre- 
hends all  the  others  :  Let  the  object-lesson  never  degenerate 
into  a  lesson  of  words. 

339.  ABUSE   OF    SENSE-PERCEPTION. — Mr.   Wickersham, 
an  American  teacher,  justly  remarks  that  "  the  object-lesson 
system  is  apt  to  continue  instruction  in  the  concrete  after 
pupils  can  appreciate  the  abstract." 

"  The  elements  of  all  kinds  of  knowledge  must  be  taught  in  con- 
nection with  objects,  but  an  acquaintance  with  material  things  is 
far  from  being  the  highest  end  of  study;  and  object-teaching 
pushed  too  far  tends  to  degrade  education.  Back  of  all,  there  are 
principles,  ideas,  controlling  things,  which  are  the  soul's  most 
nourishing  pabulum.  Soon  after  a  child  has  learned  to  count 
with  objects,  he  may  begin  to  count  without  them ;  soon  after  he 
has  become  acquainted  with  real  forms,  he  may  begin  to  deal  with 
ideal  ones."  l 

The  object-lesson  is  evidently  but  a  means  for  rising 
higher ;  it  is,  in  some  sort,  a  passage  which  must  be 
traversed  in  order  to  go  farther,  but  where  it  would  be 
unwise  to  tarry  too  long. 

340.  OBJECT-LESSONS  NOT  TO  FORM  A  REGULAR  COURSE. — 
The  mistake  of  a  great  number  of  teachers  has  been  to  con- 
sider object-lessons  as  a  special  item  in  the  programme,  and 
consequently  to  carry  into  them  the  ordinary  habits  of  in- 
struction and  the  regularity  of  a  systematic  course.     The 
object-lesson,  to  be  in  real  conformity  with  the   principles 
which  have  inspired  it,  ought  to  remain  free,  flexible,  ver- 
satile, and  animated,  just  like  the  young  minds  to  which  it  is 

1  Wickersham,  op.  cit.,  pp.  158,  159. 


OBJECT-LESSONS.  323 

addressed.     Too  often  it  has  degenerated  into  monotonous 
interrogations,  and  into  dry  and  formal  nomenclatures. 

"  It  is  not  desirable,"  says  M.  Buisson,  "  to  have  the  object- 
lesson  begin  and  end  at  a  fixed  hour.  Let  it  be  given  on  the  occa- 
sion of  a  reading  or  writing  lesson,  or  in  connection  with  the  dic- 
tation exercise,  with  the  lesson  in  history,  geography,  or  grammar. 
If  it  occupies  two  minutes  instead  of  twenty,  it  will  be  only  the 
better  for  that.  Often  it  will  consist,  not  in  a  series  of  consecutive 
questions,  but  in  one  spirited,  precise,  and  pointed  question,  which 
will  provoke  a  reply  of  the  same  sort ;  it  will  often  be  but  a  sketch 
upon  the  blackboard  which  will  be  worth  more  than  a  complete 
description.  One  day  the  object-lesson  will  be  a  visit  to  an  indus- 
trial establishment  or  to  an  historic  monument ;  on  another,  it 
will  be  a  tour  of  observation,  or  a  ramble  in  the  woods,  or  a  hunt 
for  insects  or  plants." 

Like  most  educators,  M.  Buisson  perhaps  gives  too  great 
an  extension  to  the  meaning  of  the  object-lesson,  and 
wrongly  confounds  it  with  the  general  spirit  of  intelligent 
and  attractive  instruction ;  but  with  this  reservation  we 
must  accept  his  opinion  and  consider  the  object-lesson,  not 
as  a  systematic  course  of  instruction  which  is  to  be  confined 
within  immutable  limits,  but  as  a  form  of  instruction  infi- 
nitely variable  and  always  adapting  itself  to  circumstances. 

341.  ACTUAL  PROGRAMMES.  — The  French  official  pro- 
gramme hardly  speaks  of  object-lessons  save  for  the 
maternal  schools,  by  connecting  with  them  a  knowledge  of 
common  objects  and  the  first  notions  of  natural  history. 

The  programme  of  the  primary  schools  proper  is  silent 
upon  object-lessons ;  but  yet  it  is  evident  that  it  recom- 
mends them  implicitly,  since,  in  the  statement  of  reasons 
which  precede  the  enumeration  of  the  different  topics  of 
instruction,  the  true  method  is  defined  in  these  terms : 

"  In  every  branch  of  instruction,  the  teacher  at  the  outset  uses 


324  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

sensible  objects,  causes  things  to  be  seen  and  touched,  and  places 
children  in  the  presence  of  concrete  realities. 

"  Primary  instruction  is  essentially  intuitive ;  that  is,  counts 
chiefly  on  natural  good  sense,  on  the  strength  of  proof,  on  that 
innate  power  which  the  human  mind  has  to  seize  at  first  glance 
and  without  demonstration  not  all  the  truths,  but  the  truths  that 
are  simplest  and  most  fundamental." 

342.  THE  METHOD  OF  OBJECT-LESSONS. — In  one  sense 
the  method  of  object-lessons  may  be  considered  as  synony- 
mous with  the  art  which  ought  to  animate  all  varieties  of 
instruction,  and  endeavor  to  make  them  living  and  practical. 

"With  what  enthusiasm  did  Madame  Pape-Carpantier  in 
1868  speak  of  the  new  method  ! 

"  But  what,  then,  constitutes  the  value  of  object-lessons  ?  On 
what  ground  are  they  so  popular,  so  highly  recommended,  and  in 
fact  so  profitable  ? 

"  Ah !  this  is  due  to  a  great  law  terribly  misunderstood,  which 
ordains  that  there  shall  be  no  patient  in  education  ;  which  requires 
that  the  pupil  be  an  active  agent  in  it,  as  active  as  the  teacher ; 
that  he  be  an  intelligent  co-laborer  in  the  lessons  which  he  receives 
from  him,  and  that,  according  to  the  expression  of  the  catechism, 
he  co-operate  in  the  work  of  grace. 

"  That  which  constitutes  the  value  of  object-lessons,  that  which 
makes  them  agreeable  and  effective,  is  that  they  are  in  conformity 
with  this  law ;  that  they  make  an  appeal  to  the  personal  powers  of 
the  child ;  that  they  call  into  play,  into  movement,  his  physical 
and  intellectual  faculties ;  and  that  they  satisfy  his  natural  need 
of  thinking,  speaking,  moving,  and  changing  from  one  object  to 
another.  It  is  that  they  appeal  to  his  mind  through  the  medium 
of  his  senses,  and  that  they  make  use  of  what  he  knows  and  loves, 
to  interest  him  in  what  he  does  not  know  or  does  not  yet  love, 
and  because,  in  a  word,  they  are  for  him  the  concrete,  and  not  the 
abstract"  l 

1  Madame  Pape-Carpantier,  Conferences,  etc.,  2  partie,  p.  73. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  STUDY  OF  THE  MOTHER  TONGUE. 

343.  IMPORTANCE  OF  THE  STUDY.  —  Is  it  really  necessary 
to-day  to  insist  on  the  capital  importance  of  the  study  of  the 
vernacular  in  the  common  school?  Everybody  agrees  that 
it  should  be  assigned  the  first  place.  "  It  forms,"  says 
M.  Breal,  "  the  beginning  and  the  center  of  studies,  and  it 
is  for  pupils  the  principal  instrument  of  progress." 

First,  the  study  of  the  vernacular  is  valuable  on  its  own 
account.  Who  can  deny  its  immediate  practical  utility? 
One  becomes  truly  a  man  only  through  the  power  to  express 
his  thought  correctly  and  clearly.  One  is  a  citizen  only  on 
the  condition  of  speaking  the  national  tongue,  the  language 
of  his  fellow-citizen.  Then,  again,  the  knowledge  of  lan- 
guage is  the  key  to  all  other  knowledges.  The  common 
tongue  puts  us  in  communication  with  our  fellows  and  satis- 
fies the  needs  of  life  ;  the  language  of  literature  opens  to  us 
the  treasures  of  human  thought,  and  technology  those  of 
formulated  science. 

But  the  study  of  language  is  valuable  also  through  its 
influence  on  intellectual  education.  To  know  one's  lan- 
guage is  to  know  how  to  think.  The  extent  of  the  vocabu- 
lary w.hich  you  have  at  your  disposal  corresponds  to  the 
abundance  of  the  ideas  which  you  possess.  The  new  words 
added  to  those  you  already  know  are  so  many  conquests  of 
your  mind  over  the  unknown.  On  the  other  hand,  the  pro- 
priety of  the  expression  is  equivalent  to  the  accuracy  of  the 

826 


326  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

thought.  Finally,  the  grammatical  correctness  which  you 
know  how  to  put  into  the  construction  of  your  sentences  is 
directly  related  to  the  logic  which  governs  your  judgments 
and  reasonings.  To  acquire  the  mother  tongue  is  not,  then, 
merely  to  acquire  verbal  material,  but,  through  the  mechan- 
ism of  language,  to  develop  and  train  the  thought,  of  which 
language  is  but  the  instrument. 

344.  DIFFICULTY  OF  THIS  INSTRUCTION.  —  For  children  in 
easy  circumstances,  whose  parents  speak  the  tongue  purely, 
the  study  of  language  offers  special  facilities.  For  them, 
and  for  them  alone,  the  national  language  is  the  mother 
tongue ;  they  have  learned  it  without  effort  and  by  use  at 
their  mother's  knee.  But  how  many  children  there  are  who 
have  not  this  good  fortune !  At  home  and  in  their  neigh- 
borhood they  hear  the  language  spoken  only  incorrectly. 
For  them  the  national  language  is  truly  a  foreign  tongue, 
which  they  must  painfully  study  on  the  benches  of  the 
school.1 

But  even  for  children  who  have  been  brought  up,  so  to 
speak,  on  correct  speech,  this  instinctive  apprenticeship  in 
the  mother  tongue  is  not  sufficient.  There  always  remains 
for  them  the  need  at  least  of  extending  their  vocabulary, 
necessarily  restricted ;  of  taking  account  of  the  meaning  of 
words  which  they  have  vaguely  retained,  and  which  they 
understand  only  confusedly,  of  learning  orthography,  and 
finally  of  reflecting  on  the  rules  of  grammar,  without  which 
the  correctness  of  their  style  or  of  their  language  would 
always  be  poorly  assured.  It  is  nature  which  unties  the 
child's  tongue,  and  with  the  aid  of  parents  teaches  him  to 
speak  ;  but  it  is  study  alone,  with  the  aid  of  teachers,  which 
teaches  him  to  speak  well. 

1  What  is  here  said  of  French  is  in  a  considerable  degree  true  of 
English,  though  our  speech  is  less  corrupted  by  patois.  ( P.) 


THE  STUDY  OF  THE  MOTHER  TONGUE.       327 

345.  THE  PURPOSE.  — For  a  long  time  the  study  of  lan- 
guage in  our  schools  has  been  synonymous  with  the  study  of 
grammar.  When  the  distinction  between  the  parts  of  a  dis- 
course, conjugation,  and  syntax  had  been  taught,  it  was 
thought  that  all  had  been  done ;  to-day  we  have  a  totally 
different  idea  of  the  teaching  of  the  mother  tongue,  of  its 
extent  and  scope.  This  instruction  comprises  three  essen- 
tial things,  and  all  three  are  of  inestimable  value. 

It  is  proposed:  1.  To  comprehend  the  vernacular;  2. 
To  know  how  to  speak  it ;  3.  To  know  how  to  write  it. 

The  least  that  can  be  demanded  is  that  the  pupils  in  our 
schools  comprehend  their  native  tongue.  It  is  certainly  not 
proposed  to  teach  them  the  twenty  thousand  words  of  which 
the  language  is  composed,1  and  to  make  of  their  minds  a 
living  dictionary.  What  is  necessary  is  that  they  know 
with  all  possible  exactness  the  few  hundreds  of  expressions 
which  constitute  the  basis  of  the  language.  The  possession 
of  a  clear  and  exact  vocabulary  is  the  necessary  preparation 
for  the  reading  of  good  authors.  Too  many  children  leave 
our  schools  without  ever  having  formed  a  taste  for  personal 
reading,  partly  because  they  find  in  books  too  many  words 
whose  meaning  they  do  not  comprehend. 

Another  essential  purpose  of  language  study  is  to  learn 
to  speak.  With  many  people,  occasions  for  writing  may  be 
comparatively  rare,  but  occasions  for  talking  occur  every 
day  and  every  hour.  Who,  then,  does  not  need,  however 
humble  his  condition,  to  express  himself  with  facility 
and  correctness,  if  not  with  elegance  ?  Doubtless  it  is  not 
required  to  make  praters  and  speechmakers,  but  it  is  neces- 
sary to  put  the  future  citizen  in  a  condition  to  communicate 
his  thoughts,  to  converse  with  his  fellows,  to  manage  his 
affairs,  and  to  discuss  his  interests. 

1  The  latest  edition  of  an  unabridged  English  (American)  dictionary 
enumerates  118,000  words  as  belonging  to  the  English  speech.  (I1.) 


328  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

Finally,  written  language  must  not  be  neglected,  though 
it  is  of  less  importance  than  spoken  language.  Though 
comparatively  new  and  of  recent  introduction  into  our 
schools,  exercises  in  composition  and  dictation  are  not  the 
less  interesting  nor  the  less  useful.  The  teaching  of  lan- 
guage would  be  a  derision  if  it  did  nothing  more  than  cause 
the  rules  of  grammar  to  be  learned,  and  laboriously  incul- 
cate the  science  of  orthography  on  children  who  would 
never  be  called  on  to  apply  these  rules  or  to  use  that 
knowledge  in  compositions  of  their  own.  Grammar  and 
orthography  are  excellent  things,  but  on  one  condition, 
however,  —  and  this  is  that  they  are  used,  —  that  they  are 
not  for  children  as  arms  in  the  hands  of  soldiers  who  do 
not  know  how  to  handle  them. 

346.  PRINCIPLES. — Thus  understood,  the  teaching  of 
language  is  an  interesting  and  practical  study,  which  is 
extending  in  all  directions  beyond  the  old,  narrow  scheme  of 
grammatical  memory-lessons  and  exercises  in  orthography. 
In  order  to  attain  its  true  purpose,  this  instruction  must 
conform  to  the  natural  method,  which  proceeds  from  the 
example  to  the  rule,  from  the  experiment  to  the  law,  from 
common  use,  from  the.  concrete  instance  to  the  general  and 
abstract  precept.  Grammar  must  be  learned  through  lan- 
guage, and  not  language  through  grammar,  as  Herder  said  ; 
and  Mr.  Spencer  declares  that  "  as  grammar  was  made  after 
language,  so  it  ought  to  be  taught  after  it."  "For  a  long 
time,"  as  the  Pere  Girard  said,  "  a  healthy  didactics  has 
told  us,  'Few  rules,  many  exercises.'  " 

The  child  enters  the  school  having  hardly  any  use  of  the 
mother  tongue.  Let  what  is  lacking  be  supplied  by  graded 
selections  from  easy  authors.  In  default  of  conversations 
which  he  has  not  heard,  let  the  book  envelop  him,  so  to 
speak,  in  its  precise  terms,  in  its  correct  constructions,  in 


THE  STUDY  OF  THE  MOTHER  TONGUE.       329 

an  atmosphere  of  pure  and  clear  speech.  Let  hiin  be  drilled 
in  speaking,  in  constructing  sentences,  at  first  orally,  and 
later  by  writing.  Let  the  teacher  give  the  example  of 
exact  pronunciation  and  of  idiomatic  expression.  Let  the 
blackboard  present  to  the  pupil  models  of  simple  state- 
ment; and  the  child,  familiarized  little  by  little  with  the 
expressions  and  idioms  of  his  native  tongue,  will  be  pre- 
pared for  the  didactic  lessons  which,  without  this  prepara- 
tion, would  infallibly  have  repelled  him  and  wearied  him 
without  profit. 

347.  PROPOSED  REFORMS.  —  From  ministerial  circulars 
we  quote  a  few  passages  which  clearly  indicate  the  direc- 
tion which  should  be  given  to  instruction  in  the  mother 
tongue. 

"  In  the  course  in  French,  many  teachers  make  a  misuse  of  the 
grammar,  aud  think  that  all  has  been  done  when  they  have  put 
into  the  memory  of  their  pupils  a  great  number  of  rules,  distinc- 
tions, and  technical  terms.  Insist  that  in  this  study  abstractions 
and  subtleties  shall  be  avoided ;  that  the  attention  shall  be  given 
to  applications  and  examples,  especially  to  examples  furnished  by 
the  reading  and  the  explication  of  great  writers.  It  is  in  this  way 
.  that  the  language  with  its  principal  rules,  its  refinements,  and  its 
idioms,  is  learned  much  better  than  in  the  grammar." 

"  The  old  instruction  ought  to  be  replaced  by  living  lessons. 
The  grammar  should  be  reduced  to  a  few  simple  and  short  defini- 
tions, and  to  a  few  fundamental  rules  which  are  illustrated  by 
examples ;  and  in  proportion  as  the  intelligence  of  the  children  is 
developed,  they  must  be  supplied  with  the  finest  specimens  of  our 
literature.  Here  they  must  first  be  made  acquainted  with  the  sig- 
nification of  words,  even  to  their  nice  shades  of  meaning,  and  the 
succession  and  connection  of  ideas ;  and  later,  the  inversions  and 
even  the  bold  strokes  of  genius.  In  this  exercise  more  depend- 
ence must  be  placed  on  that  natural  logic  and  grammar  which 
children  carry  about  with  them,  than  upon  the  old  mass  of  ab- 
stractions and  formulas  with  which  the  memory  is  harassed  \\  it h- 


330  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

out  profit  to  the  intelligence.  Lhomond  said  a  hundred  years  ago, 
"  Metaphysics  is  not  fit  for  children,  and  the  best  elementary  book 
is  the  voice  of  the  teacher  who  varies  his  lessons  and  the  manner 
of  presenting  them  according  to  the  needs  of  those  to  whom  he 
speaks." 

"  The  teaching  of  grammar  will  henceforth  be  no  longer  lim- 
ited to  the  purely  mechanical  study  of  rules,  but  these  rules  will 
become  matter  for  explanations  by  the  teacher." 

348.  THE  NECESSITY  OF  GRAMMAR.  —  It  was  not  left 
until  the  nineteenth  century  to  dream  of  the  absolute  sup- 
pression of  the  grammar  in  the  course  of  instruction  in  lan- 
guage. Nicole,  in  his  book,  the  Education  d'un  prince, 
replied  in  these  terms  to  the  partisans  of  that  illusion : 

"  The  thought  of  those  who  desire  no  grammar  at  all  is  but  a 
thought  of  indolent  persons  who  wish  to  spare  themselves  the 
labor  of  teaching  it ;  and,  very  far  from  relieving  children,  this 
plan  infinitely  burdens  them,  since  it  takes  from  them  a  light 
which  would  facilitate  the  understanding  of  their  lessons  and 
obliges  them  to  learn  a  hundred  times  that  which  it  would  suffice 
to  learn  but  once." 1 

Let  us  pass  by  the  question  of  indolence,  for  it  would  be 
quite  as  just  to  say  that  the  system  which  consists  in  putting 
a  grammar  into  the  hands  of  pupils,  and  leaving  them  there 
to  clear  up  the  subject  all  alone,  is  a  thought  of  indolent 
people ;  but  Nicole  is  right  in  holding  that  grammatical 
rules,  preceded  by  explanations  and  illustrated  by  examples, 
relieve  the  mind  of  the  child  and  economize  precious  time. 
Though  the  intelligence  is  repelled  by  abstract  principles 
prematurely  imposed  upon  it,  it  is  disposed  of  itself  to 
anticipate  general  rules  which  sum  up  its  experience  and 
flow  naturally  from  the  examples  on  which  it  has  been 

1  To  the  same  effect  Mr.  Bain  says,  "  The  grammar  abridges  the 
labor  by  generalizing  everything  that  can  be  generalized." 


THE  STUDY  OF  THE  MOTHER  TONGUE.       331 

nourished.  Here  it  reposes  with  pleasure,  just  as  a  victo- 
rious army  installs  itself  in  fortresses  where  it  makes  sure 
of  its  conquest,  and  whence  it  dominates  the  successive 
advances  it  has  made. 

However  elementary  the  study  of  language  may  be,  it 
permits,  in  our  opinion,  the  knowledge  of  grammatical 
rules,  which  are  but  the  resume  of  usage,  the  code  of  a 
language  definitely  fixed.  Progress  in  teaching  here  con- 
sists, not  in  suppressing  rules,  but  in  simplifying  them,  and 
in  reforming  the  manner  in  which  they  are  taught. 

349.  THE  TRUE  GRAMMATICAL  METHOD. — The  true 
grammatical  method,  according  to  all  that  has  just'  been 
said,  consists  in  placing  the  main  reliance  upon  the  use  of 
language,  and  in  making  the  rules  flow  from  examples  which 
the  pupil  invents  for  himself,  which  he  finds  in  books,  or 
which  the  teacher  suggests  to  him. 

This  was  the  method  of  the  Pere  Greard,  who  made  the 
basis  of  grammatical  instruction  the  use  of  the  language 
which  the  child  brings  from  home  ;  this  use  to  be  completed 
and  corrected  at  school  by  the  exercises  which  have  taught 
him  to  read  and  write. 

"  Let  us  recollect,"  he  said,  "  that  a  multitude  of  examples  re- 
peated and  analyzed  is  the  best  code  of  language,  since  it  intro- 
duces into  rational  practice  the  rules  which  by  another  method  it 
would  have  to  prescribe  by  arbitrary  authority." * 

It  is^useless  to  give  a  name  to  that  method  which  is  the 
method  of  reason  and  good  sense ;  we  do  not  think  that 
the  least  progress  in  the  study  of  language  has  been  made 
by  saying,  with  certain  educators,  that  it  ought  to  be  taught 
by  the  "  analytico-synthetic  method." 

1  Mr.  Bain  is  wrong  when  he  asserts  that  pupils  in  general  cannot 
study  grammar  with  profit  before  the  age  of  ten.  "  Grammar,"  he 
adds,  "  is  more  difficult  than  arithmetic." 


332  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

350.  THE  QUESTION  OF  TEXT-BOOKS.  —  "  If  it  is  possible, 
no  grammar  in  the  hands  of  pupils,"  —  so  says  the  Minis- 
terial Circular  of  1857.  We  do  not  think  it  is  proper  to  go 
so  far,  and  deprive  ourselves  of  the  aid  of  a  book  in  instruc- 
tion as  important  as  that  of  the  mother  tongue.  A  book 
is  necessary  at  least  for  the  pupils  of  the  intermediate  and 
higher  courses, — a  book  that  is  well  constructed,  which  the 
teacher  is  to  use  with  discretion  and  intelligence. 

"  Till  lately,"  says  M.  Breal,  "  the  book  was  the  principal  char- 
acter in  the  school-room,  and  the  teacher  was  but  the  commen- 
tator on  the  book.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  through  the  mouth  of 
the  teacher  that  the  children  ought  at  first  to  know  the  rules. 
The  book  will  be  consulted  as  a  memento" 

But  however  disposed  we  may  be  to  magnify  the  office  of 
oral  explanations,  the  book  is  necessary.  This  is  the  ad- 
vice of  Mr.  Bain,  who  gives  strong  reasons  to  justify  his 
opinion : 

"  What  is  printed  is  only  what  is  proper  to  be  said  by  word  of 
mouth ;  and  if  the  teacher  can  express  himself  more  clearly  than 
the  best  existing  book,  his  words  should  be  written  down  and 
take  the  place  of  the  book.  No  matter  what  may  be  the  peculiar 
felicity  of  the  teacher's  method,  it  may  be  given  in  print  to  be 
imitated  by  others,  and  so  introduce  a  better  class  of  books  ;  the 
reform  that  proposes  to  do  away  with  books  entirely,  thus  ending 

in  the  preparation  of  another  book Again,  it  may  be  said 

that  the  children  are  not  of  an  age  to  imbibe  the  doctrines  from  a 
printed  book,  but  can  understand  them  when  conveyed  with  the 
living  voice.  There  is  much  truth  in  this,  but  it  does  not  go  the 
length  of  superseding  the  book,  which  will  still  have  value  as  a 
means  of  recalling  what  the  teacher  has  said,  and  as  the  basis 
of  preparation  to  answer  questions  thereon.  If  a  class  is  to  be 
taught  purely  viva  voce,  its  progress  must  needs  be  very  slow."  l 

1  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  pp.  344,  345. 


THE   STUDY   OF1   THE   MOTHER   TONGUE.  333 

351.  QUALITIES   OF   A   GOOD   GRAMMAR. — Fenelon    had 
indicated    with    precision    the    characteristics    of    a   good 
grammar. 

"  A  professional  grammarian,"  he  said,  "  runs  the  risk  of  com- 
posing a  grammar  that  is  too  technical,  too  full  of  observations 
and  exceptions.  It  seems  to  me  that  one  should  limit  himself  to 
a  short  and  simple  method.  At  first,  give  only  the  most  general 
rules ;  the  exceptions  will  come  as  they  are  needed.  The  impor- 
tant point  is  to  introduce  a  person  as  soon  as  possible  into  the 
actual  application  of  rules  by  frequent  use ;  afterwards  this  per- 
son will  take  pleasure  in  noting  the  special  rules  which  he  at"  first 
followed  without  paying  any  careful  attention  to  them."  l 

After  three  hundred  years,  the  criticisms  and  observations 
of  Fenelon  are  still  opportune,  and  the  most  competent  edu- 
cators of  our  day  do  no  more  than  repeat  them. 

"In  general,"  says  M.  Berger,  "the  grammars  published  for 
pupils  are  too  full  of  details,  and  they  are  not  yet  affranchised 
from  the  plan  of  the  Latin  grammars.  .  .  Our  grammarians  are 
too  fond  of  classifications  and  distinctions  which  have  no  substan- 
tial basis.  We  believe  that  it  would  be  possible  greatly  to  dimin- 
ish the  extent  of  our  classical  grammars,  without  doing  harm  to 
solidity  of  knowledge  in  the  matter  of  language.  Simplicity, 
then,  is  the  first  quality  of  a  good  grammar;  and  this  simplicity 
should  manifest  itself  by  the  small  number  of  rules.  Too  many 
grammarians  still  recommend  simplicity  in  form,  without  con- 
forming to  it  in  fact ;  it  is  not  necessary  to  distinguish  proposi- 
tions as  subjective,  completive-direct,  completive-indirect,  circum- 
stantial, attributive,  etc."  2 

352.  HISTORICAL    GRAMMAR. — We   know   what   a   com- 
plete   revolution    has    been    accomplished   in   grammatical 
studies  by  the  introduction  of  the  historical  method.     "  The 

1  Lettre  aur  les  occupations  de  I' Academic  fran$aise,  II. 

2  See  article  Grammaire,  Die.  de  Pedagogic. 


334  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

traditional  grammar,"  says  Michael  Breal,  "  formulated  its 
prescriptions  as  though  they  were  the  decrees  of  a  will  as 
inscrutable  as  sovereign ;  historical  grammar  casts  a  ray  of 
good  sense  into  the  gloom."  It  substitutes  explanations 
for  simple  affirmations ;  it  explains  present  usage  by  ancient 
usage. 

"What  can  be  more  natural,"  says  M.  Brachet,  "than  to  make 
the  history  of  language  contribute  to  the  explanation  of  grammat- 
ical rules  by  going  back  from  actual  usage  to  the  very  moment 
when  they  sprang  into  being  ?  Besides  the  advantage  of  being 
rational,  the  historical  method  has  another ;  the  memory  always 
retains  more  clearly  that  of  which  our  mind  has  taken  an  account ; 
and  the  pupil  will  recollect  the  rules  of  g-ammar  so  much  the 
better  if  they  have  a  point  of  support  in  his  intelligence.  This  is 
the  method  which  the  Germans,  always  solicitous  to  stimulate  the 
judgment  of  the  child,  have  for  a  long  time  employed  in  their 
schools  for  the  teaching  of  the  national  language."  l 

Notwithstanding  its  interest,  it  is  evident  that  historical 
grammar  can  be  introduced  only  with  difficulty  into  the 
common  school. 

First,  the  historical  grammar  of  a  derivative  language, 
like  the  French,  goes  back  to  the  languages  from  which  it 
has  sprung, — to  the  Latin  and  the  Greek;  and  these  lan- 
guages really  are,  and  ought  to  remain,  dead  languages  for 
primary  instruction.2 

On  the  other  hand,  the  purely  national  origin  of  the  ver- 
nacular, the  curiosities  of  the  ancient  tongue,  would  involve 
both  teachers  and  pupils  in  learned  researches  which  are 
beyond  their  sphere. 

So  Mr.  Bain  is  right  in  saying  : 

"  There  is  great  interest,  and  some  utility,  in  tracing  the  course 

1  Brachet,  Nouvelle  Grammaire  fran$aise,  preface. 

2  Notwithstanding  what  has  recently  been  said  about  it  we  do  not 
think  that  the  introduction  of  Latin  into  the  normal  schools  should 
be  hoped  for. 


THE  STUDY  OF  THE  MOTHER  TONGUE.       335 

of  our  language  from  the  more  ancient  dialects ;  but  this  subject 
may  easily  run  to  a  disproportionate  length  in  the  first  stages  of 
English  teaching.  Present  meanings  and  use  are  the  only  guid- 
ance to  the  employment  of  the  language ;  the  reference  to  archaic 
forms  can  sometimes  account  for  a  usage,  but  cannot  control 
it."1 

353.  DICTATION  EXERCISES.  —  The  dictation  exercise  is 
the  essential  process,  the  proper  use  of  orthography,  which 
is  learned  not  less  by  habit  and  memory  than  by  the  study 
of  rules  and  reasoning.2  But  if  dictation  exercises  are 
useful,  it  is  on  the  condition  that  they  are  not  abused  and 
that  they  are  wisely  selected. 

"  Too  many  dictation  exercises  are  required  in  our  schools,  and 
there  is  too  great  a  disposition  to  seek  out  difficult  exercises. 
There  are  schools  where,  on  the  approach  of  examinations,  there 
is  nothing  but  dictation."  8 

These  exercises  must  not  be  too  long4  nor  too  fre- 
quent, nor  should  unnecessary  difficulties  be  introduced 
into  them. 

Another  important  rule  is,  not  to  impose  on  the  child  dic- 
tation exercises  abounding  in  words  which  he  has  never 
seen,  and  which  he  is  obliged  to  spell  at  hazard.  So,  many 
educators  rightly  recommend  teachers  to  spell  or  write  on 

1  Education  as  a  Science,  pp.  349,  360. 

8  We  cannot  subscribe  to  the  opinion  of  teachers  who  assert  that  it 
is  useless  to  require  exercises  in  orthography  proper,  but  that  it  is  suf- 
ficient to  rely  upon  reading,  writing,  composition,  and  grammatical 
exercises  to  teach  spelling.  Especially  in  the  primary  schools,  where 
the  child  is  not  aided  in  the  study  of  orthography  by  a  knowledge  of 
Latin  and  Greek,  spelling  exercises  are  required. 

8  Article  Orthographic,  Dictionnaire  de  Pedagogic. 

4  In  American  schools  consecutive  texts  are  not  generally  dictated, 
but  long  lists  of  isolated  words,  as  in  the  French  collection,  the 
Pautex. 


336  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

the  blackboard  all  the  terms  in  the  exercise  which  the  pupil 
does  not  know.  Orthography  is  learned  mainly  through  the 
sense  of  sight,  through  the  memory  of  the  eyes.1 

Again,  these  exercises  should  correspond  to  the  rules 
already  learned,  and  should  be  but  the  application  of  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  they  should  not  be  selected  at  random, 
without  taking  account  of  the  age  and  the  intelligence  of 
children.  They  ought,  like  all  other  exercises,  to  contribute 
to  the  general  education  of  the  child. 

Is  it  necessary  to  add  that  they  ought  always  to  be  cor- 
rected with  care,  and  that  the  faults  should  always  be 
pointed  out  in  connection  with  the  rules  which  have  been 
violated?  It  is  not  necessary  to  spell  all  the  words  in  the 
exercise,  but  only  those  which  are  really  difficult. 

354.  GRAMMATICAL  AND  LOGICAL  ANALYSIS.  —  In  the 
teaching  of  language  the  thought  of  suppressing  grammati- 
cal and  logical  analysis  should  not  be  entertained.  An 
abuse  has  certainly  been  made  of  them,  as  when  a  teacher 
jequires  them  as  routine,  mechanical  work,  devised  to  get 
,id  of  pupils  and  to  avoid  the  need  of  giving  attention  to 
,hem.  But  analysis  is  necessary,  because  for  the  child  lan- 
guage is  but  a  confused  whole,  whose  various  elements  he 
does  not  distinguish  and  whose  construction  he  does  noft 
clearly  grasp. 

Exercises  in  analysis  may  be  employed  in  the  form  of 
oral  exercises  at  the  blackboard.  Analysis  made  viva  voce, 

1  The  plan  of  teaching  orthography  by  writing  words  seems  to  be 
based  on  the  assumption  that  when  we  spell  a  word  we  reproduce 
the  mental  picture  of  it.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  me  much 
more  probable  that  for  purposes  of  spelling  our  knowledge  of  words 
is  nothing  more  than  a  recollection  of  the  names  and  order  of  the 
letters  which  compose  them.  That  any  mind  really  carries  the 
mental  pictures  of  the  words  in  an  ordinary  vocabulary  seems  to 
me  incredible.  (P.) 


THE    STUDY   OF   THE   MOTHER   TONGUE.  337 

especially  at  first,  is  preferable  to  written  analysis.  But 
the  thing  of  chief  importance  is  the  choice  of  tests  for 
analysis. 

The  monotonous  and  interminable  analyses  which  impose 
on  the  child  the  toil  of  writing  more  than  the  toil  of  reflec- 
tion, are  justly  condemned.  Their  most  obvious  result  is  to 
disgust  the  pupil  with  the  study. 

"  I  would  have  our  teachers,"  says  M.  Greard,  "  without  depriv- 
ing themselves  entirely  of  the  resources  offered  by  special  collec- 
tions, become  moi-e  and  more  accustomed  to  look  for  the  tests  they 
need  in^their  dictations  in  classical  works,  and  to  construct  their 
examples,  or  make  their  pupils  construct  them,  out  of  the  material 
furnished  by  the  class  instruction.  What  pages  of  transparent 
language,  of  exquisite  thought,  and  of  every  variety,  —  moral  es- 
says, descriptions,  narratives,  letters,  —  does  our  language  contain ! 
The  national  history  is  so  rich  in  striking  statements,  ready-made, 
so  to  speak,  to  serve  as  examples  in  grammar !  Let  it  be  at  least 
on  these  texts,  and  on  these  well-selected  examples,  that  the  child 
be  drilled  in  analysis.  That  which  has  contributed  to  the  disfavor 
into  which  analysis  has  fallen,  is  doubtless,  first,  the  abuse  which 
has  been  made  of  it ;  but  it  is  also  the  whimsical  and  tedious  char- 
acter of  the  texts  to  which  it  has  generally  been  applied,  and  of 
the  performances  to  which  it  has  given  rise.  The  use  of  analysis 
is  necessary  if  we  wish  the  child  to  come  to  a  good  understanding 
of  the  relations  of  the  different  terms  of  a  proposition  or  of  a  sen- 
tence. We  need  oppose  only  the  excess,  or  the  false  direction,  into 
which  it  has  fallen,  and  for  this  purpose  it  suffices  to  make  the 
analysis,  for  the  most  pant,  at  the  board,  orally,  in  sparing  terms 
on  clear  and  interesting  sentences." 

355.  ORDER  TO  BE  FOLLOWED.  —  Educators  are  not 
agreed  as  to  the  place  which  should  be  assigned  to  gram- 
matical and  logical  analysis.  The  official  programme  of 
1882  gives  the  preference  to  grammatical  analysis ;  but 
many  writers,  on  the  contrary,  would  begin  with  logical 
analysis. 


338  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  In  order  to  make  the  analysis  of  a  sentence,"  says  Madame 
Pape-Carpantier,  "we  must  first  make  an  analysis  of  the  thought 
which  it  expresses ;  in  other  terms,  a  logical  analysis,  or  the  study 
of  the  ideas  and  their  relations,  ought  to  precede  grammatical 
analysis  proper,  or  the  study  of  words  as  they  are  formed  into 
sentences." 

"  In  the  progressive  development  of  the  reason,"  says  C.  Marcel, 
"  the  perception  of  an  object  always  precedes  the  consideration  of 
its  parts ;  and  we  reach  an  understanding  of  our  language  by  pass- 
ing from  the  sentence  to  the  words."  l 

Among  Swiss  teachers,  on  the  contrary,  there  is  a  ten- 
dency towards  the  reverse  order,  or  rather  towards  sacri- 
ficing logical  analysis  completely. 

"  In  the  higher  schools,"  says  M.  Horner,  "  if  one  has  time  to 
squander,  he  might  afford  the  luxury  of  a  few  excursions  into  the 
desert  of  logical  analysis." 

"We  are  firm  in  the  belief  that  logical  analysis  is  useful 
and  necessary,  but  on  the  condition  that  we  do  not  indulge 
in  a  terminology  too  complicated  aud  too  technical,  and  that 
in  the  classification  and  naming  of  propositions  we  choose 
the  simplest  and  clearest  method. 

356.  EXERCISES  IN  INVENTION  AND  COMPOSITION.  —  The 
child  in  the  primary  school  ought  to  be  discreetly  drilled  in 
composition,  or  at  least  in  the  elements  of  composition. 

"  Where  is  the  child  that  would  dare  flatter  himself  that  he  will 
never  have  a  letter  to  write,  a  memorandum  to  dictate,  or  a  report 
to  draw  up?" 

Surely  there  are  such  intimate  relations  between  spoken 
language  and  written  language,  that  much  will  already  have 
been  done  to  habituate  the  child  to  the  work  of  composition, 

1  L' Etude  des  langues  ramenfe  a  leur  veritable  principe,  II.,  p.  26. 


THE   STUDY   OF   THE    MOTHER   TONGUE.  339 

if,  from  his  entrance  into  school,  he  has  been  made  to  con- 
verse, and  if,  in  his  recitations  and  in  the  object-lessons,  he 
has  been  steadily  required  to  express  himself  with  correct- 
ness. But  these  oral  exercises  cannot  take  the  place  of 
written  exercises. 

Some  teachers  seem  to  put  exercises  in  invention  and 
exercises  in  composition  upon  the  same  plane. 

"  Ideas,"  says  M.  Greard,  "  do  not  come  of  themselves  into  the 
child's  mind ;  he  must  be  taught  to  find  them.  Still  less  do  they 
of  themselves  take  the  order  and  form  which  they  ought  to  as- 
sume ;  and  so  he  must  be  taught  to  compose." 

To  tell  the  truth,  we  do  not  think  that  invention  ought  to 
play  an  important  part  in  school,  and  the  importance  which 
has  been  given  to  it  seems  to  us  but  a  reminiscence  of 
secondary  instruction.  At  college  it  may  be  proper  to  train 
future  writers,  and  in  general  men  who  will  need  to  draw 
original  ideas  from  their  own  resources ;  but  at  school  we 
must  think  only  of  putting  future  workmen  in  a  condition  to 
express  correctly  and  clearly  the  ideus  which  spring  naturally 
and  without  reflection  from  the  needs  and  circumstances  of 
life. 

This  is  why  we  must  not  run  the  risk,  with  children  of  the 
primary  school,  when  we  propose  to  them  a  subject  for  com- 
position, to  receive  this  reply,  which  often  comes  to  their 
lips:  "  I  do  not  know  what  to  say"!  Furnish  them  with 
the  ideas  they  need,  by  conversations,  by  lectures,  or  at 
least  by  the  choice  of  a  subject  borrowed  from  their  own 
experience. 

"  The  first  exercises  in  composition,"  says  Horner,  "  will  consist 
in  reproducing,  partly  by  writing  or  in  recapitulating,  the  object- 
lessons.  .  .  .  There  will  next  be  undertaken  a  written  description 
of  common  objects,  but  this  description  will  always  be  preceded  by 


340  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

an  oral  lesson  and  followed  by  a  methodical  recapitulation  upon 
the  blackboard. 

"The  first  idea  of  developing  a  few  sentences,  four  or  five  at 
most,  on  the  start,  will  be  furnished  by  the  teacher.  Even  the 
scheme  of  the  development  will  be  prepared,  and  the  pupil  will 
be  left  to  fill  it  in,  by  pointing  out  the  causes,  effects,  and  acces- 
sory circumstances  of  time,  place,  etc.  This  sort  of  theme  might 
also  sometimes  serve  as  a  text  for  an  exercise  in  orthography.  In 
whatever  way  the  task  is  accomplished,  if  the  corrections  are 
made  in  the  class,  at  the  blackboard,  and  if  each  pupil  furnishes 
the  quota  of  ideas  more  or  less  just,  more  or  less  happy,  which  he 
has  found,  the  teacher  will  have  an  opportunity  to  compare  the 
contributions  one  with  another,  and  to  call  into  exercise  the  judg- 
ment of  all." 

And  M.  Greard  concludes  that  it  is  less  important  to 
teach  children  to  write  than  to  develop  their  judgment  and 
their  moral  sense.  We  shall  not  deny  this ;  but  it  must 
not  be  forgotten  that  the  habit  of  composing  easily,  cor- 
rectly, and  if  need  be  elegantly,  has  also  its  value,  and  that 
it  is  expedient  for  everybody.  ' '  The  first  quality  of  lan- 
guage," says  M.  Breal,  "  is  propriety  of  expression,  and  it 
may  as  properly  be  required  of  the  workman  and  the 
peasant  as  of  the  man  of  letters  and  the  philosopher." 
Now,  it  is  not  merely  by  making  him  speak,  but  also  by 
making  him  write,  that  the  child  is  taught  to  form  a  correct 
notion  of  the  meaning  of  words. 

357.  COMPOSITIONS  FROM  PICTURES. — There  is  now  such 
a  desire  to  facilitate  the  child's  work  that  resort  is  often 
made  to  refinements,  to  processes  which  may  have  their 
utility,  provided  they  are  not  abused.  Such  is  the  use  of 
compositions  from  pictures,  an  American  importation,  and  an 
application  of  intuitive  instruction  to  exercises  in  composi- 
tion. In  this  case  the  child  has  but  to  see  and  to  tell  what 
he  sees  in  the  pictures  placed  before  his  eyes.  But  this 


THE   STUDY   OF   THE   MOTHER  TONGUE.  341 

recreative  exercise  should  not  be  made  general,  and  it  will 
always  be  much  better  to  describe  to  children  the  things 
themselves,  the  concrete  and  living  realities. 

A  refinement  of  the  same  sort  is  the  exercise  which  con- 
sists in  translating  a  selection  of  verse  into  prose. 

"  This  exercise,"  says  Cadet,  "  may  at  least  render  the  service  of 
marking  the  distinction  between  poetical  language  and  ordinary 
language,  in  the  use  of  words  and  the  construction  of  sentences."1 

As  for  ourselves,  we  do  not  believe  that  there  is  any  great 
value  in  practicing  this  kind  of  transposition  or  of  transmu- 
tation, as  Belgian  teachers  say.  It  is  much  better  to  use 
simplicity,  and  require  the  child  to  describe  a  walk  which 
he  has  taken  or  an  event  which  he  has  witnessed. 

358.  EXERCISES  IN    ELOCUTION. — Elocution    is  no  less 
important  than  composition ;  to  know  how  to  speak  is  even 
more   necessary  than   to   know  how  to  write.     Hence  the 
importance  accorded  by  Swiss  and  Belgian  teachers  to  oral 
exercises.     In  France,  our  official  programme  requires  the 
oral  reproduction  of  short  sentences  read  or  explained,  then 
of  narratives  recited  by  the  teacher,  the  resume  of  selections 
read  in  the  class,  the  report  of  lectures,  of  lessons,  of  walks, 
of  experiments,  and  recitals  of  literary  and  historical  selec- 
tions. 

359.  LITERARY     EXERCISES.  —  Without    presuming    too 
much,  we   may  assert   that   the   primary  school   itself  will 
tend  more  and  more  to  initiate  the  child  into  the  study  of 
literature,  and  will  inspire  him  with  a  desire  to  continue  for 
life,  by  personal  reading,  a  pursuit  full  of  attractions. 

It  is  mainly  in  the  form  of  lectures  given  by  the  teacher, 
and  of  recitations  given  by  the  pupil,  that  this  instruction 

1  Article  Langue  Materiielle,  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  Ptfdagogie. 


342  PKAGTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

will  be  given.  To  these  there  might  be  added  literary  criti- 
cisms, which  will  have  the  advantage  of  accustoming  the 
pupil  to  write,  at  the  same  time  that  they  will  exercise  his 
taste  and  bring  him  into  more  intimate  relation  with  the 
beauties  of  literature.  Of  course  all  these  exercises  should 
be  conducted  with  discretion.  It  is  especially  in  the  teach- 
ing of  literature  that  the  instructor  ought  to  recollect  this 
reflection  of  M.  Greard :  "  The  object  of  primary  instruc- 
tion is  not  to  embrace,  under  the  different  subjects  which 
it  touches,  all  that  it  is  possible  to  know,  but  to  learn 
thoroughly  in  each  of  them  what  no  one  should  be  igno- 
rant of." 


CHAPTEE    V. 

THE    TEACHING    OF    HISTOKY. 

360.  HISTORY  IN  THE  COMMON   SCHOOL.  —  Twenty  years 
ago  history  had  not  yet  gained  an  entrance  into  the  common 
schools  of  France. 

Even  in  the  day  of  grand  projects  and  at  the  heroic 
epoch,  I  mean  under  the  Revolution,  the  boldest  organizers 
of  the  national  schools,  Talleyrand  and  Condorcet,  had  not 
included  history  in  their  programmes.  This  was  because, 
in  the  ardor  of  their  struggle  against  the  old  regime,  and  in 
their  enthusiasm,  sometimes  fanatical,  for  the  new  order  of 
things,  the  early  revolutionists  had  come  almost  to  believe 
that  the  history  of  France  dated  only  from  May  5,  1789. 
Why  recall  memories  of  a  past  forever  abolished?  Of 
what  use  to  relate  the  long  history  of  the  French  monarchy  ? 
That  history  had  disappeared  in  the  night  of  August  4,  with 
the  abuses  and  the  privileges  of  the  time ! 

But  these  prejudices  have  happily  disappeared.  In  1833 
M.  Guizot  introduced  history,  and  particularly  the  history 
of  France,  into  the  higher  common  schools;  and  in  1867 
another  historian,  M.  Duruy,  accomplished  the  same  reform 
for  the  benefit  of  the  primary  schools. 

361.  PURPOSE  OF  HISTORICAL   INSTRUCTION.  —  When   the 
history  of  France  is  taught  to  little  Frenchmen,  the  purpose 
is  surely  to  develop  their  patriotic  emotions  and  to  train 
them  up  in  civic  virtues.     In  fact,  history  is  an  admirable 
school  of  patriotism.     By  means  of  it  one's  country  ceases 

343  * 


344  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

to  be  a  cold  abstraction ;  it  becomes  a  real,  living  being, 
whose  destiny  the  pupil  follows  through  the  centuries,  glad- 
dened, elated  by  its  successes,  moved  and  affected  by  its 
reverses.  Instructed  by  the  principal  events  of  the  national 
history,  familiarized  with  the  names  of  its  illustrious  men, 
the  child  will  believe  himself  a  member  of  a  great  family, 
which  he  will  love  the  more  because  he  will  know  it  the 
better.  He  will  feel  himself  pledged  to  defend  the  heritage 
of  his  fathers,  when  he  knows  at  what  a  costly  sacrifice  it 
has  been  acquired  and  preserved.  He  will  be  ready  to 
imitate  the  beautiful  and  noble  examples  of  his  ancestors, 
when  a  faithful  narrative  has  nourished  his  imagination 
with  them. 

362.  INFLUENCE  OF  HISTORY  ON  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE 
MIND.  —  But  history  offers  still  other  advantages.  Even 
reduced  to  its  simplest  elements,  and  brought  within  the 
comprehension  of  children,  it  contributes  to  emancipate  the 
reason  and  to  train  the  judgment.  Between  the  man  igno- 
rant and  narrow,  whose  thought  does  not  pass  beyond  the 
horizon  of  present  events,  and  him  who,  moderately  in- 
structed in  the  history  of  his  country,  has  some  idea  of  the 
progress  of  the  ages  and  of  the  painful  crisis  out  of  which 
modern  France  has  issued,  what  a  distance,  what  an  abyss  ! 
There  are  studies  of  which  it  may  be  said  that  they  are  the 
liberators  of  the  spirit ;  history,  with  the  sciences,  ranks 
among  the  first  of  these.  How  many  belated  souls  would  be 
relieved  of  their  prejudices  if  history5  intelligently  studied, 
presented  to  them  the  spectacle  of  the  changes  that  have 
been  accomplished  and  of  the  marvelous  transformations 
that  have  renewed  the  face  of  the  world !  How  many 
adventurers  and  sectaries  would  be  cured  of  their  folly,  if 
they  could  be  sent  to  the  common  school  for  a  few  months, 
and  in  history  made  to  touch  with  the  finger  the  necessary 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTORY.  345 

slowness  of  social  progress !  History  teaches  patience  to 
those  who  lack  it,  and  hope  to  those  who  grow  discouraged. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  gives  wings  to  the  imagination ;  on  the 
other,  historical  knowledge  is  as  ballast  which  gives  equilib- 
rium to  the  spirit  and  moderation  to  the  judgment. 

363.  CHARACTERISTICS  AND  LIMITS  OF  THIS  INSTRUCTION.— 
It  cannot  be  proposed  in  the  common  school  to  undertake 
the  study  of  universal  history.  Here  the  national  history 
ought  to  be  the  single  object  of  instruction.  The  facts  of 
ancient  history  or  of  general  history  should  be  introduced 
only  by  reason  of  their  intimate  relations  with  the  nation's 
history,  and  in  the  same  proportion  as  they  explain  its  desti- 
nies. It  is  important,  moreover,  that  the  national  history 
be  taken  up  at  its  beginning  in  order  that  it  may  be  con- 
tinued and  carried  forward  to  the  end.  In  American  schools 
the  middle  age  is  almost  completely  ignored.  This  is  well 
enough  for  a  nation  hardly  a  century  old,  but  it  should  not 
be  the  same  with  us.  Our  history  is  a  whole  which  cannot 
be  divided.  In  order  properly  to  comprehend  the  Revolu- 
tion, we  must  know  the  feudal  system  and  the  absolute 
monarchy.  We  can  be  indifferent  to  nothing  which  our 
ancestors  have  done,  to  nothing  which  they  have  suffered. 
Moreover,  the  old  history  of  the  Middle  Age  is  particularly 
interesting  to  the  child ;  here  the  picturesque  predominates 
and  dramatic  incidents  abound. 

It  is  not  merely  by  fragments  and  detached  narratives, 
but  in  a  regular  and  consecutive  course,  that  the  history  of 
their  country  in  its  vast  compass  should  be  presented  to 
children.  Doubtless  with  beginners  it  is  well  and  perhaps 
necessary  to  resort  at  first  to  anecdotes  and  biographies ; 
but  as  soon  as  possible  we  must  require  the  child  to  follow 
the  inarch  of  time  and  teach  him  the  succession  of  facts  in 
their  chronological  order. 


346  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  Do  not  proceed  at  random,"  says  M.  Lavisse.  "  Weave  firmly 
the  woof  on  -which  you  are  to  delineate  the  grand  facts  and  the 
grand  figures  of  history." 

Complete  and  regular,  the  teaching  of  history  ought  at 
the  same  time  to  be  temperate  without  ceasing  to  interest 
and  to  please.  Especially  in  the  common  school  it  is  neces- 
sary to  avoid  the  dryness  of  a  simple  chronological  nomen- 
clature and  the  diffusiveness  of  an  over-rich  erudition.  In 
order  to  escape  fatigue  and  confusion,  the  attention  must  be 
held  to  the  great  facts. 

"  Our  better  teachers,"  says  M.  Greard, "  know  that  in  history 
it  is  the  solid  framework  of  great  events  and  of  generative  ideas 
that  they  are  to  engrave  in  the  intelligence  of  children,  without 
losing  themselves  in  the  details  of  accessory  facts  and  secondary 
ideas." 

Finally,  without  omitting  anything  essential,  the  intelligent 
teacher  will  know  how  to  choose  the  facts  which  deserve  more 
than  others  to  retain  the  attention  and  to  be  more  fully 
related  and  explained.  In  his  choice  he  will  be  guided  by 
the  definition  given  by  Voltaire:  "Real  history  is  that  of 
the  manners,  the  laws,  the  arts,  and  the  progress  of  the 
human  spirit."  He  will  not  lose  his  way,  like  the  historians 
of  former  times,  in  tedious  details  and  descriptions  which 
have  no  practical  value. 

"  Supposing  even  that  you  had  diligently  read,"  says  Mr. 
Spencer,  "  not  only  '  The  Fifteen  Decisive  Battles  of  the  World,' 
but  accounts  of  all  other  battles  that  history  mentions  ;  how  much 
more  judicious  would  your  vote  be  at  the  next  election  ?  " 

364.  FUNDAMENTAL  NOTIONS  OF  HISTORY. — English 
teachers  are  troubled,  and  not  without  reason,  with  the 
difficulty  the  child  experiences  in  entering  into  the  world  of 
history,  in  comprehending  its  fundamental  notions,  or  what 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTORY.  347 

Mr.  Bain  calls  the  elements  of  history.  From  an  early  hour 
the  child  sees  about  him  hills,  valleys,  watercourses,  plains, 
villages,  and  cities ;  it  will  be  easy  then  to  initiate  him  into 
geographical  studies ;  but  society,  the  state,  public  offices, 
even  the  idea  of  the  past,  —  these  are  things  which  surpass 
the  mind  of  the  child,  reduced  as  he  is  to  his  sensations 
and  confined  within  the  narrow  circle  of  the  family  or  of  the 
school. 

Thus  English  teachers  are  of  the  opinion  that  the  teacher 
of  history  should  first  give  a  short  series  of  lessons,  either 
oral  or,  better,  borrowed  from  a  good  book,  by  means  of 
which  he  should  attempt  to  make  intelligible  some  of  the 
simple  and  fundamental  ideas  of  history,  as  a  state,  a 
nation,  a  dynasty,  a  monarch,  a  parliament,  legislation, 
justice,  taxes,  etc.1  We  cannot  too  strongly  condemn  a 
method  like  this,  which,  at  the  beginning  of  the  study  of 
history,  would  re-establish  the  abstractions  which  have 
been  discarded  with  such  difficulty  from  the  beginning  of 
other  studies.  Those  so-called  historical  elements  are  but 
general  notions,  of  which  the  child  has  no  need  for  the 
understanding  of  particular  facts  and  for  acquiring  an 
interest  in  a  moving  narrative.  History  is  pre-eminently  a 
science  of  facts,  and  it  is  especially  with  children  that  it 
must  preserve  this  character.  Little  by  little,  and  with  the 
child's  progress  in  study,  these  notions,  supported  upon 
facts,  will  classify  themselves. 

365.  Two  SYSTEMS  FOR  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  SUBJECT- 
MATTER.  —  It  is  a  difficult  question  to  know  which  is  better : 
the  ancient  programme,  which  presented  the  whole  of  our 
national  history  to  the  children  of  the  common  school  three 
times,  proportioning  the  breadth  of  the  treatment  and 

1  Fitch,  op.  tit.,  p.  370. 


348  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

adjusting  the  nature  of  the  questions  to  the  child's  progress 
in  age  and  in  intelligence ;  or  the  order  followed  in  sec- 
ondary instruction,  which  consists  in  dividing  the  history  of 
France  into  several  periods,  in  making  several  portions  of 
it,  each  of  them  being  allotted  to  a  different  class. 

366.  ADVANTAGES  AND  DISADVANTAGES  OF  THE  ANCIENT 
SYSTEM.  —  According   to   the   ancient   method,  the   teacher 
passed  over  the  same  road  three  times,  but  each  time  the 
subject  was   enlarged ;    and   it  is  impossible   to   deny  the 
advantages  of  a  system  which  it  was  wrong  to  abandon  com- 
pletely.    Through   the   effect  of  repetition,   the  facts  were 
better  engraved  in  the  memory  of  the  children  ;  and  besides, 
on  this  plan,  from   the   elementary  course    the  pupil  has 
an  idea,    however   incomplete  it  may   be,    of   the   general 
course  of  the  national  history.     Finally,  as  they  bear  three 
times  on  the  same  subjects,  the  lessons  may  be  skillfully 
graded  and  adapted  to  the  age  of  the  pupils. 

But  the  disadvantages  of  a  triple  repetition  are  not  less 
evident.  First,  ennui  is  to  be  feared ;  for  in  the  last  two 
courses  there  is  no  longer  any  surprise;  there  is  nothing 
absolutely  new  for  the  pupil. 

Besides,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  the  teacher,  obliged  to 
exhibit  the  whole  history  of  France  at  one  view,  may  not 
be  able  to  make  a  leisurely  survey  of  the  most  important 
epochs.  Now,  with  children  particularly,  history  is  valu- 
able only  through  its  details.  Hence  it  would  seem  to  be 
necessary  to  divide  the  course  into  several  parts,  so  as  not 
to  oppress  the  minds  of  beginners  under  the  weight  of  a 
chronology  too  extended  and  too  complicated. 

367.  ACTUAL   PROGRAMME.  —  These   reflections  seem  to 
have  inspired  the  authors  of  the  programme  of  1882,  who 
organized  the  study  of  history  upon  a  new  plan. 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTORY.  349 

Below  is  the  text  of  the  actual  programmes.  It  will  be 
noticed  that  they  are  very  short,  that  they  do  not  enter  into 
detail,  and  that  they  simply  fix  the  distribution  of  the 
topics,  rightly  leaving  to  the  teacher  the  liberty  of  moving 
at  his  ease  within  the  limits  that  have  been  traced  for  him. 

ELEMENTARY  COURSE  :  Narratives  and  familiar  conversations 
upon  the  most  important  characters  and  the  principal  facts  of  the 
national  history,  up  to  the  beginning  of  the  Hundred  Years'  War. 

INTERMEDIATE  COURSE  :  Elementary  course  in  the  history  of 
France,  insisting  exclusively  on  the  essential  facts  since  the  Hun- 
dred Years'  War. 

HIGHER  COURSE  :  Very  summary  notions  of  general  history ; 
for  antiquity,  Egypt,  the  Jews,  Greece,  Rome  ;  for  the  middle  age 
and"  modern  times,  great  events,  studied  especially  in  their  rela- 
tions to  the  history  of  France. 

Systematic  review  of  the  history  of  France ;  a  more  thorough 
study  of  modern  history. 

Presented  at  first  in  the  form  of  narratives  and  anec- 
dotes, but  always  in  a  chronological  order,  down  to  the 
Hundred  Years'  War,  the  history  of  France  does  not  con- 
stitute a  regular  exposition,  consecutive  and  didactic,  except 
in  the  Intermediate  Course.  It  is  completed  in  this  form 
during  the  two  years  of  the  Intermediate  Course ;  but  in 
the  Higher  Course  it  is  systematically  reviewed  from  begin- 
ning to  end,  and  in  its  most  recent  periods  it  is  exhaustively 
studied. 

The  actual  system  is  a  just  medium  between  the  two 
methods  which  we  have  indicated.  On  the  one  hand,  in 
the  first  two  courses  the  history  is  divided  into  two  parts, 
from  the  beginning  down  to  1328,  and  from  1328  to  the 
present  day.  On  the  other  hand  the  third  course,  save  the 
addition  of  some  notions  on  general  history,  is  devoted  to  a 
systematic  review,  and  on  certain  points  is  exhaustive. 

This  mixed  system  escapes  the  faults  and  embodies  the 


350  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

advantages  of  the  two  exclusive  systems.  As  it  seems  to 
us,  however,  it  has  one  great  disadvantage,  — that  of  keep- 
ing the  youngest  children  of  the  school  for  too  long  a  period 
on  the  remotest  epochs  of  our  history. 

Is  it  not  to  be  feared  that,  expatriated  to  their  ninth  year 
in  remote  centuries  where  nothing  recalls  to  them  the 
present,  the  beginners  may  not  bring  to  the  study  of 
history  an  interest  that  is  vivid  enough? 

368.  THE  SO-CALLED  REGRESSIVE  METHOD. — This  dis- 
advantage is  so  real  that  certain  teachers  have  had  the  idea 
of  recommending  a  strange  method  which  in  Germany  is 
called  the  regressive  method,  and  which  consists  in  teaching 
history  backwards,  by  beginning  at  the  end  and  ascending 
the  course  of  the  ages. 

"In  England,  in  the  primary  school,"  says  M.  Greard,  "the 
study  of  history  is  begun  with  the  contemporary  period,  for  the 
purpose  of  giving  the  intelligence  of  the  child  a  good  grounding 
in  the  ideas  of  the  time  in  which  he  is  called  to  live." 

This  system  has  had  but  few  imitators  in  France.  I  very 
well  know  that  in  geography  we  start  from  the  village 
school  to  radiate  little  by  little  over  the  whole  world ;  but 
in  history  it  is  impossible  to  follow  the  same  course.  We 
must  resign  ourselves  to  the  necessary  conditions  of  each 
study,  and  it  would  be  absurd  to  attempt  to  invert  the 
chronological  order. 

However,  let  us  retain  one  just  and  practical  idea  from 
this  whimsical  scheme  ;  in  the  teaching  of  history  it  will  be 
best  as  often  as  possible  to  compare  the  past  with  the 
present,  and  to  illustrate  ancient  events  by  comparisons  with 
contemporaneous  events.  As  some  one  has  said,  "  In 
primary  instruction  every  lesson  in  history  should  begin 
with  the  word  formerly,  and  continue  with  the  word  to-day." 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTORY.  ,  351 

369.  GENERAL  METHOD   TO  BE   FOLLOWED. — The  order 
to  be  followed  is  not  debatable,  —  it  is  the  order  of  time; 
but  the  method,  what  shall  it  be? 

First,  let  us  say  that  it  should  not  be  the  same  for  the 
different  courses.  That  which  is  possible  and  desirable 
with  the  most  advanced  pupils  is  not  always  so  with  the 
beginners. 

Let  us  add  that  the  teaching  of  history,  more  perhaps 
than  any  other,  admits  a  great  variety,  a  great  liberty  in 
means.  We  shall  not,  however,  go  so  far  as  to  say,  with 
Mr.  Bain,  "that  the  teaching  of  history  almost  appears  to 
defy  method." 

No,  there  are  general  rules  to  be  followed,  there  are 
accessory  processes  to  be  employed ;  and  the  best  proof  of 
this  is  that  the  men  charged  with  the  inspection  of  schools 
always  find  much  to  censure  in  what  is  done  in  them  with 
respect  to  the  teaching  of  history. 

370.  ORDINARY  FAULTS  IN  HISTORICAL  TEACHING. — In 
the  Rapports  of  the  Inspectors-General  of  primary  instruc- 
tion we   notice  a  number   of   observations   relative   to   the 
most  ordinary  defects  in  the  teaching  of  history. 

"The  history  is  recited,  but  not  understood.  Almost  every- 
where history  is  but  a  simple  repetition.  The  lesson  is  explained 
when  it  is  too  late.  Pupils  recite  without  comprehending;  the 
explanations  are  generally  insufficient.  The  teacher  is  lost  in 
the  gloom  of  the  first  centuries ;  there  is  absolute  silence  as  to 
modern  times.  Hardly  anywhere  is  history  brought  down  to  the 
period  when  it  begins  to  become  the  most  interesting.  The 
attention  is  usually  restricted  to  the  study  of  dynasties  and  the 
chronology  of  battles.  The  teacher  seems  afraid  to  take  up  the 
history  of  the  Revolution.  Questions  are  much  too  rare.  The 
lesson  is  rarely  prepared  by  the  teacher.  History  is  generally 
the  subject  that  is  most  neglected.  Most  frequently  history  is 
taught  only  in  the  higher  divisions."  (Rapports  of  1879,  1880.) 


352  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  Too  much  time  is  still  given  to  the  accounts  of  battles. 
Teachers  are  satisfied  with  the  pure  and  simple  repetition  of  the 
text  without  any  development  of  the  subject.  History  is  too 
much  isolated  from  geography.  The  course  is  begun,  but  is 
rarely  finished.  Written  review  is  most  often  wanting.  The 
study  of  history,  conducted  exclusively  from  the  book,  remains 
profitless."  (Rapports  of  1880,  1881.) 

In  a  word,  history  is  still  too  often  an  exercise  of  pure 
repetition,  in  which  the  book  plays  an  exclusive  part.  The 
teacher  does  not  participate  in  it  sufficiently  by  oral 
expositions,  by  explanations,  and  by  comments.  Besides, 
he  lingers  too  long  on  the  ancient  period,  and,  either  from 
having  a  poor  knowledge  of  his  own  times  or  as  a  conse- 
quence of  certain  scruples,  he  abridges  or  even  omits  the 
history  of  the  Revolution  and  of  the  contemporary  period. 
The  accounts  of  battles  weigh  more  with  him  than  the  more 
useful  analysis  of  institutions  and  manners.  Finally,  the 
processes  which  are  wholly  indispensable  for  good  instruc- 
tion, —  interrogations  and  written  reviews,  —  are  totally 
neglected. 

371.  RECOMMENDATIONS  MADE  BY  TEACHERS. — After  the 
complaints  of  the  Inspectors,  let  us  hear  the  recommenda- 
tions made  by  the  teaching  body  itself.  All  of  them  are 
not  faultless,  but  most  of  them  confirm  the  criticisms  of  the 
Inspectors-General,  and  prove  that  at  least  the  best  of  the 
teaching  profession  are  in  accord  with  the  wishes  of  their 
superiors.  Let  us  say,  in  addition,  that  the  following  recom- 
mendations relate  only  to  the  elementary  division  or  lowest 
class : 

"  Teaching  through  sight  by  means  of  engravings.  Instruction 
through  the  explanation  of  pictures.  Pass  rapidly  over  the  early 
periods.  Costumes,  employments  ;  comparison  by  means  of  draw- 
ings and  pictures  of  the  industries  of  our  ancestors  with  those  of 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTOEY.  353 

to-day.  Let  history,  made  as  vivid  as  possible,  be  taught  to  chil- 
dren in  the  form  of  biographies  or  narratives.  Instruction  in 
history  consists  in  amusing  and  instructive  anecdotes  related  by 
the  teacher  and  repeated  by  the  pupils.  Instruction  given  in  the 
form  of  object-lessons  may  and  should  comprehend  only  the  great 
facts,  the  great  epochs  of  our  history ;  and  yet  it  ought  to  be 
integral.  Ascend  the  course  of  the  ages  by  making  history.  The 
teaching  of  history  should  be  wholly  oral.  Charts  representing 
the  great  facts  of  our  national  history.  A  collection  of  twenty 
engravings,  representing  in  a  very  clear  and  salient  manner  the 
principal  characters  of  French  history,  is  a  necessity.  Instruction 
in  history  will  be  given  by  means  of  short  narratives,  which 
children  will  be  called  upon  to  reproduce  by  means  of  questions 
prepared  in  advance.  It  will  serve  to  develop  in  children,  not  only 
the  memory  but  the  judgment,  and  especially  the  principal  civic 
virtues." 

372.  WHAT  MAY  BE  CALLED  INTUITION  IN  HISTORY.  —  We 
must  have  been  struck,  on  reading  the  preceding  extracts, 
with  the  importance  which  competent  judges  attach  to  the 
methods  and  processes  which  render  the  instruction  in 
history  interesting  and  animating.  It  is  not  necessary  to 
address  the  memory  alone,  although  memory  is  the  chief 
resort  in  history  ;  but  we  must  also  address  the  reasoning 
faculties,  and  cause  events  to  be  comprehended  and  judged. 
"It  is  not  of  so  much  importance  to  know  where  Mar- 
cellus  died,"  said  Montaigne,  "  as  why  it  was  unworthy 
of  his  duty  that  he  died  there."  Above  all,  we  must  speak 
to  the  imagination,  and,  so  to  speak,  resuscitate  the  past 
before. the  eyes  of  the  child.  Let  the  narrative  of  the  book 
and  the  lesson  of  the  teacher  have  enough  relief  and  color, 
so  that  the  child  may  see  in  some  sort  the  things  and  the 
men  that  are  spoken  of. 

"  Animate  your  narratives  by  lively  and  familiar  tones,"  said 
Fenelon.  "Make  all  your  characters  speak ;  and  children  who 


354  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

have  a  vivid  imagination  will  believe  they  see  them  and  hear 
them."  And  to  the  same  effect  Guizot  wrote :  "  Historical 
characters  must  seem  to  children  real  living  beings  whom  they 
love  or  hate,  whom  they  esteem  or  despise." 

To  this  intuition  of  the  mind,  which  is  the  consequence 
of  a  well-told  narrative,  it  is  not  useless  to  join,  when  it  is 
possible,  a  real  intuition  of  the  eyes,  by  showing  to  the  child 
vignettes  and  engravings  which  represent  the  principal 
characters  and  the  great  scenes  of  history. 

"  Eight  or  ten  well-made  engravings,"  says  M.  Buisson,  "  with 
or  without  color,  teach  the  children  more  about  the  ancient  civil- 
izations than  many  pages  of  descriptions.  A  view  of  the  pyra- 
mids or  of  the  hypogea  of  Upper  Egypt,  an  exact  reproduction 
of  the  monuments,  vessels,  arms,  and  costumes  of  Rome  or  of 
Greece,  gives  a  singular  animation  and  support  to  the  narratives 
of  the  teacher.  It  is  an  object-lesson  transported  into  the  most 
remote  past."1 

However,  pictures  are  but  an  accessory,  and  it  pertains 
mainly  to  the  art  of  the  teacher  or  of  the  writer  to  animate 
the  instruction  in  history  and  to  give  the  child  an  interest 
in  it. 

"  During  the  first  years,"  says  Madame  Pape-Carpantier,  "  his- 
tory ought  to  be  presented  to  children  in  the  form  of  anecdotes. 
The  facts  related  ought  not  only  to  be  chosen  from  the  moral 
point  of  view,  but  presented  in  an  animated  and  picturesque 
manner.  Let  the  teacher  put  into  them  a  little  of  that  action 
which  is  recommended  to  the  orator,  to  the  end  that  his  recital 
may  produce  a  picture  in  the  imagination  of  his  little  pupils. 
In  a  narrative  children  love  what  is  dramatic.  We  should  give 
movement  to  our  characters,  make  them  speak,  act,  and,  in  a 
word,  live.  ...  So  far  as  possible,  each  detached  feature  should 
be  accompanied  by  a  sketch  of  the  manners  contemporary  with 
the  facts  related ;  for  example,  the  mysterious  life  of  the  Druids 
in  the  forests  which  formerly  covered  the  soil  of  our  country." 

1  M.  Buisson,  L 'Instruction  primaire  a  Vienne,  p.  181. 


THE   TEACHING   OF    HISTORY.  355 

373.  A  LESSON  UPON  THE  FEUDAL  SYSTEM.  —  To  show 
how  a  skillful  teacher  may  succeed  in  animating  a  lesson  iu 
history,  even  on  a  difficult  subject ;  in  interesting  an  entire 
class  in  it  by  striking  descriptions  and  by  drawings  upon 
the  board,  and  in  rendering  the  past  clear  and  vivid  by  an 
incessant  appeal  to  the  experience  or  to  the  reason  of  the 
child,  the  best  course  will  be  to  give  an  example,  which  we 
shall  borrow  from  M.  Lavisse. 

The  following  lesson  was  given  at  Paris,  in  the  Faubourg 
Saint  Antoine,  to  a  class  of  children  eight  years  of  age : 

"I  arrived  at  the  moment  when  a  young  teacher  began  a 
lesson  on  the  Feudal  System.  He  did  not  understand  his  busi- 
ness, for  he  spoke  of  hereditary  services  and  privileges  in  a  way 
which  left  the  children  whom  he  addressed  absolutely  indifferent. 
At  that  moment  M.  Berthereau,  the  director  of  the  school,  enters. 
He  interrupts  the  lesson  and  appeals  to  the  whole  class :  "  Who 
is  there  here  who  has  ever  seen  a  castle  of  the. Feudal  times?" 
No  one  replies.  The  master  then  speaks  to  one  of  these  young- 
inhabitants  of  the  Faubourg  Saint  Antoine :  "  Have  you  never 
been  at  Vincennes  ?  "  "  Yes,  sir."  "  Very  well ;  you  have  seen  a 
castle  of  Feudal  times."  A  starting-point  has  now  been  found 
in  the  present.  "  What  sort  of  a  building  is  this  castle  ?  "  Sev- 
eral children  reply  in  concert.  The  master  selects  one  of  them, 
leads  him  to  the  board  and  obtains  a  rough  drawing,  which  he 
corrects.  He  marks  indentures  in  the  wall.  "  What  is  that  ? " 
No  one  knew.  He  denned  an  ^embrasure.  "What  was  the 
purpose  of  this  ?"  Some  one  finally  guessed  that  this  served 
for  defence.  "  With  what  did  they  fight,  —  with  guns  ?  "  The 
greater  number,  "  No,  sir."  "  With  what,  then  ?  "  A  young 
scholar  from  the  foot  of  the  class  cries  out,  "With  bows." 
"  What  is  a  bow  ? "  Ten  reply,  "  It  is  an  arbalist,  sir."  The 
teacher  smiles,  and  explains  the  difference.  He  then  tells  how 
difficult  it  was  with  bows,  and  even  with  the  military  engines  of 
the  time,  to  take  a  castle  whose  walls  were  high  and  broad ;  and 
continues :  "  When  you  are  good  workmen,  and  travel  on  business 
or  for  pleasure,  you  will  meet  with  the  ruins  of  castles."  He 


356  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

mentions  Montlhdry  and  other  ruins  in  the  vicinity  of  Paris. 
"  In  each  of  them  there  was  a  feudal  lord.  What  did  all  these 
lords  do  ? "  The  whole  class  replies,  "  They  fought."  Then 
in  the  presence  of  these  children,  no  one  of  whom  lost  a  single 
word,  the  master  describes  a  feudal  lord,  placing  the  knights  in 
the  saddle  and  covering  them  with  their  armor.  "  But  a  castle 
is  not  taken  with  cuirasses  and  lances,  and  so  the  war  was  not 
finished.  And  who  would  suffer  most  from  the  war  ?  Those 
who  had  no  castles,  the  peasants  who  in  those  times  worked  for 
the  lord.  Then  the  cabins,  belonging  to  the  peasants  of  the 
neighboring  lord,  were  burned.  '  Ah !  you  burn  my  cabins,' 
said  the  lord  who  was  attacked ;  '  I  will  burn  yours.'  He  did 
so,  and  burned  not  only  the  cabins,  but  even  the  harvests.  "And 
what  happens  when  the  harvests  are  burned  ?  There  is  a  famine. 
Can  people  live  without  eating  ? "  The  whole  class :  "  No,  sir." 
"  Then  is  war  very  necessary  to  find  a  remedy  ?  "  He  then  speaks 
of  the  Truce  of  God,  and  adds  :  "  This  is  truly  a  singular  law. 
Why,  it  was  said  to  the  brigands,  remain  quiet  from  Saturday 
evening  till  Wednesday  morning,  but  for  the  rest  of  the  time 
do  not  trouble  yourselves,  —  fight,  burn,  pillage,  kill !  Were 
these  people  madmen  then  ? "  A  voice :  "  Most  certainly." 
"No;  they  were  not  madmen.  Pray  listen  to  me.  Here  are 
indolent  people.  I  do  the  best  I  can  to  have  them  work  the 
whole  week ;  but  I  would  be  half-satisfied  to  have  them  work 
till  Wednesday.  The  church  would  much  prefer  not  to  have 
them  fight  at  all ;  but  as  she  could  not  help  it,  she  attempted  to 
make  the  lords  keep  quiet  half  of  the  week.  Something  is  always 
gained  in  this  way.  But  the  church  was  not  successful.  There 
must  be  force  against  force,  and  it  was  the  king  who  brought  all 
these  people  to  terms."-  Then  the  master  explains  that  the  lords 
were  not  all  of  equal  rank,  and  that  below  the  master  of  such  a 
castle  there  was  a  more  powerful  lord,  and  one  of  higher  rank 
living  in  another  castle.  He  gives  a  fairly  correct  idea  of  the 
gradations  in  rank,  and  at  the  top  places  the  king.  "  When 
people  are  fighting  with  each  other,  who  stops  them  ?"  Reply, 
"The  policeman.'1  "Very  well;  the  king  was  a  policeman. 
What  was  done  with  those  who  fought  and  killed  somebody  ? " 
Reply :  "  They  are  brought  to  trial."  "  Very  well ;  the  king 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTORY.  357 

was  a  judge.  Can  we  do  without  policemen  and  judges  ?  "  "  No, 
sir." '  "  Very  well ;  the  ancient  kings  were  as  useful  to  France  as 
policemen  and  judges.  In  the  end  they  did  evil,  but  they  began 
by  doing  good.  What  did  I  say,  —  as  useful  ?  Much  more  so ; 
for  there  were  more  brigands  then  than  now.  These  lords  were 
ferocious  fellows,  were  they  not  ? "  The  class :  "  Yes,  sir." 
"  And  the  people,  my  children,  were  they  any  better?"  Unani- 
mous reply,  in  a  tone  of  conviction :  "  Yes,  sir."  "  No,  no,  my 
children.  When  they  were  cowards,  the  common  people  were 
terrible  people.  They  also  pillaged,  burned,  and  killed ;  they 
killed  women  and  children.  Reflect  that  they  .did  not  know 
what  was  good  or  what  was  bad.  They  had  not  been  taught  to 
read." l 

374.  THE  BOOK.  —  There  is  a  great  distance  between 
this  varied  and  attractive  instruction  and  the  method  too 
often  in  use,  which  consists  in  making  the  pupil  read  a 
book,  and  sometimes  making  him  learn  it  mechanically  by 
heart. 

As  soon  as  possible  the  teacher  ought  to  intervene,  by 
familiar  conversations  in  the  lower  classes,  and  by  a  con- 
secutive exposition  with  the  older  pupils. 

However,  we  do  not  think  of  proscribing  the  book,  which, 
especially  in  history,  is  necessary  for  accuracy  in  dates  and 
the  memory  of  facts.  It  would  be  unwise  to  abandon  the 
child  to  the  hazards  of  memory  and  the  possible  errors  of 
note-books. 

In  default  of  a  special  book,  as  in  Germany,  it  is  at  least 
necessary  that  the  reading-book,  that  "  encyclopedia  of  the 
common  school,"  should  contain  among  other  things  the 
historical  notions  the  knowledge  of  which  is  thought  to  be 
indispensable. 

Better  still  are  the  elementary  historical  books,  com- 
posed with  exclusive  reference  to  the  common  schools,  and 

1  Recite  des  Deux  Mondes. 


358  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

similar  to  those  which  have  been  published  for  several  years 
in  France,  which  avoid  dryness,  long  nomenclatures,  gene- 
alogies, and  superfluous  details,  which  give  children  general 
impressions,  clear  views,  and  a  taste  for  history. 

375.  SUMMARIES     AND    NARRATIVES. — An     elementary 
book   en   history   should    comprise  at  least   two    essential 
parts, — summaries  and   narratives. 

The  summaries  should  be  as  complete  and  at  the  same 
time  as  brief  as  possible. 

The  pupil  will  learn  these  by  heart  •,  for  even  in  history 
there  is  a  part  for  literal  recitation  to  play.  The  special 
purpose  of  these  summaries  is  to  assure  precision  of  ideas. 
They  will  fix  in  the  child's  mind  the  rigorous  succession  and 
order  of  events.  By  this  means  we  shall  escape  the  method 
of  scattered  anecdotes  or  of  disconnected  biographies,  which 
is  proper  only  for  little  children. 

There  should  not  be  too  many  narratives  in  an  elementary 
book  on  history.  They  ought  not  to  be  learned  by  heart, 
and  should  receive  only  an  attentive  reading,  enlivened 
by  oral  explanations,  by  the  interrogations  of  the  teacher, 
and  by  the  responses  of  the  pupil.  It  is  especially  by  these 
narratives  that  the  child  will  be  interested  in  the  study  of 
history  ;  he  will  find  in  them  the  portraits  of  great  men, 
sketches  of  manners,  beautiful  examples,  everything  which 
characterizes  the  different  epochs. 

Of  course,  besides  the  summaries  and  narratives,  the  book 
is  also  composed  of  a  text,  more  or  less  complete,  in  which 
the  events  are  presented  in  their  order  and  with  the  reflec- 
tions which  they  suggest.  In  a  less  elementary  book  this 
text  will  of  itself  constitute  the  whole  work. 

376.  THE   DUTY   OF   THE   TEACHER.  —  It  cannot  be   too 
often  repeated  that  the  teacher  plays  the  principal  part  in 
the  teaching  of  history. 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTORY.  359 

"  It  was  long  ago  that  Lhamond  said  that  the  best  book  is  the 
living  voice  of  the  teacher.  For  this  purpose  we  do  not  demand 
that  he  profess;  for  this  word  suggests  the  idea  of  pedantry, 
and  the  teacher  who  listens  to  his  own  voice  has  few  chances  of 
making  himself  heard.  Simple  and  modest  explanations,  pre- 
ceded or  followed  by  questions  to  illustrate  them,  —  this  is  what 
Lhomond  recommended."  l 

The  teacher  ought  to  explain  the  book,  and  comment  on 
it ;  but  he  ought  also  to  do  without  the  book  and  venture 
himself  to  sketch  the  narrative  of  an  event  or  of  an  histor- 
ical period.  Especially  in  the  higher  course  he  will  substi- 
tute the  living  voice  for  the  dead  book,  too  often  not 
comprehended.  If  he  will  prepare  himself  for  this  in  ad- 
vance, and  know  just  what  he  is  going  to  say,  and  in  what 
order,  his  oral  exposition  will  be  worth  much  more  than  the 
best  of  books. 

377.  THE  DUTY  OF  THE  PUPIL.  — In  the  study  of  history, 
the  pupil  ought  not  to  be  merely  a  reader  or  an  attentive 
listener ;  he  must  be  made  to  speak  and  relate  what  he  has 
learned  from  his  book  or  from  his  teacher.     No  subject  is 
better   adapted   to   interrogations  and  to  drill  in  speaking 
than   history.     Besides,  as  Greard   recommends,   the  pupil 
should  be  invited  to  make  a  summary  of  the  oral  lesson. 
Short  written  themes  and  reproductions  might  also  be  re- 
quired of  him  on  the  subject  which  has  been  studied  in  the 
class,  so  that  his  own  labor  may  be  added  to  that  of  the 
teacher,   and  the  history  may  not  be  for  him,  as  it  is  too 
often  the  case,  simply  the  occasion  for  easy  reading,  accom- 
plished with  distraction  and  without  real  profit. 

378.  INCIDENTAL   AIDS. — The   imagination    of  teachers, 
and  especially  that  of  authors,  has  multiplied  inventions  of 

1  M.  Greard,  L' Knseignement  priniaire  a  Paris.  Notwithstanding 
M.  Grdard,  it  is  necessary  that  the  teacher  profess,  that  he  be  a  pro- 
fessor. 


360  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

every  sort  to  facilitate  the  study  of  history.  In  general  we 
count  but  little  on  these  auxiliary  aids,  such  as  synoptical 
and  genealogical  tables.  Nevertheless,  competent  educators 
recommend  the  use  of  mural  charts. 

Nor  are  pictures  in  all  their  forms  to  be  despised.  "  It  is 
to  be  hoped,"  says  M.  Buisson,  "  that  popular  art,  escaping 
finally  from  its  trivial  uses,  may  become  with  us,  as  it 
already  has  in  other  countries,  a  means  of  diffusing  useful 
knowledge,  and  above  all  that  of  the  national  history." 

379.  HISTORY   AND   Civic  INSTRUCTION. — History  is  the 
natural   preface   to  civic   instruction,  —  that  is,   to  notions 
relating  to  the  actual  constitution  of  the  society  in  which  the 
child  is  called  to  live. 

"  The  Americans,"  says  M.  Buisson,  "  teach  history  in  view  of 
political  education.  Their  reading-books  contain  quite  numerous 
selections  relative  to  the  ancient  republics.  In  modern  times 
they  dwell  particularly  on  social  and  political  institutions.  .  .  . 
Themes  like  the  following  are  assigned  to  the  pupils :  A  parallel 
between  Pitt  and  Washington." 

"Certain  educators,"  says  M.  Braun,  "think  that  his- 
tory and  civic  instruction  ought  to  be  united,  and  taught 
one  with  the  other,  one  by  the  other." 

Without  going  so  far  as  to  blend  these  two  subjects,  we 
ought  not  to  forget  the  relations  between  them.  Instruc- 
tion in  civics  can  be  but  the  coronation  of  historical  studies ; 
and  while  relating  with  impartiality  the  history  of  his 
country,  the  teacher  will  be  right  in  shaping  his  instruction 
in  view  of  the  political  education  which  is  proper  to  be  given 
to  children. 

380.  HISTORY  AND  GEOGRAPHY.  —  History  has  still  more 
intimate  relations  with  geography,  and  the  recital  of  histori- 
cal  events  should  not  be  separated  from  a  description  of 
the  country  where  the  events  took  place.     Geography  and 


THE   TEACHING   OF   HISTORY.  361 

chronology,  says  an  old  adage,  are  the  two  eyes  of  history ; 
and  in  fact,  if  we  do  not  know  the  theatre  where  men  have 
acted,  it  is  difficult  to  form  a  just  idea  of  their  activity. 

381.  CONCLUSION. — Thus  understood,  history  is  a  truly 
profitable  study  and  a  branch  of  instruction  adapted  to 
children.  Let  us  give  ear  neither  to  Jacotot,  who  denies 
its  utility  absolutely,  nor  to  Mr.  Bain,  who  asserts  that 
of  all  the  studies  of  youth  there  is  none  so  beset  with  diffi- 
culties as  history.  In  order  to  interest  children,  it  suffices 
that  it  is  at  once  "  clear  and  living,"  according  to  Guizot's 
expression,  that  it  appeal  at  once  to  their  imagination  and 
to  their  memory.  In  order  that  it  may  be  useful  to  them, 
it  is  sufficient  that  it  be  regarded  above  all  as  a  school  of 
morals  and  of  patriotism.  Doubtless,  it  would  be  assuming 
too  much  to  demand  that  the  child  of  the  primary  school 
should  know,  like  a  philosopher,  the  causes  and  connections 
of  events,  and  that  he  discern  the  principles  that  lie  back 
of  facts.  It  is  however  necessary,  in  a  certain  measure, 
that  for  the  ordinary  child  historical  instruction  should  be 
something  besides  a  simple  narration  of  facts,  and  that  he 
should  be  trained  to  judge  of  the  good  and  the  evil  in 
human  actions.  "  History  is  not  really  history,"  says  M. 
Guizot,  "  except  as  we  grasp  the  connection  of  events  which 
succeed  one  another,  and  except  it  appear  in  its  complete- 
ness as  the  evolution  of  a  people."  By  reflection,  then,  let 
us  connect  the  detached  narratives  with  the  great  facts,  and 
with  the  great  personages  which  are  as  the  mountain-tops  of 
history ;  let  us  require  of  the  child  that  the  chronological 
succession  of  events  be  clearly  fixed  in  his  mind ;  let  us 
distinguish  the  important  periods,  —  all  this  without  ceasing 
to  be  as  simple,  as  elementary  as  possible,  and  while  recol- 
lecting that  in  history,  as  in  other  things,  we  must  know 
much  in  order  to  be  capable  of  teaching  a  little. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  TEACHING  OF  GEOGKAPHY. 

382.  PROGRESS  IN  GEOGRAPHICAL  STUDIES.  —  Geograph- 
ical studies  are  surely  making  progress  in  France.  We  have 
been  so  often  told  that  we  were  the  most  ignorant  people  in 
the  world  in  geography,  that  our  sense  of  honor  has  at  last 
been  touched,  and  we  have  made  serious  efforts  to  overtake 
our  neighbors,  the  Germans.  Even  in  the  common  school, 
the  teaching  of  geography  is  on  a  quite  respectable  footing. 
The  reports  of  the  inspectors-general  show  that  there  is 
progress  everywhere,  that  geography  is  carefully  taught,  and 
that  this  study  is  perhaps  the  one  that  pleases  pupils  the 
most. 

This  progress  is  due  doubtless,  above  all  else,  to  the  moral 
effect  which  recent  disasters  have  produced  on  our  minds. 
Since  the  day  when  our  soil  was  invaded  and  our  territory 
mutilated  by  foreigners,  who  by  means  of  their  maps  seemed 
to  be  at  home,  we  have  better  understood  the  importance 
and  the  value  of  geographical  studies. 

But  this  progress  is  also  due  to  the  happy  change  which, 
in  late  years,  has  profoundly  modified  the  conditions  of 
geographical  teaching.  For  a  dry  and  barren  nomenclature 
of  proper  names  and  the  repetition  of  an  unintelligible 
vocabulary,  modern  pedagogy  has  substituted  a  living  study, 
full  of  attraction,  which  addresses  itself  to  the  senses  and  to 
the  intelligence  ;  which  brings  before  the  child  by  vivid  and 
clear  descriptions  the  nook  of  earth  where  he  was  born,  the 


THE  TEACHING  OF  GEOGRAPHY.         363 

country  for  which  he  ought  to  feel  willing  to  die  if  need  be, 
and  finally  the  entire  earth,  where  in  default  of  real  travel 
he  is  happy  to  be  able  to  make  at  least  imaginary  journeys. 
And  at  the  same  time  that  the  general  spirit  of  geographical 
teaching  has  been  changed,  art  has  placed  at  its  service  and 
introduced  into  the  school  new  instruments  of  study,  such  as 
globes,  maps  in  relief,  wall  maps,  maps  of  all  sorts,  —  in  a 
word,  a  complete  outfit,  which  facilitates  the  task  of  the 
teacher  and  enlivens  the  work  of  the  pupil. 

383.  NEW  METHODS  :  ROUSSEAU  AND  PESTALOZZI.  —  Of  all 
subjects  geography  is  the  one  which  seems  best  adapted  to 
the  processes  of  the  new  pedagogy,  to  the  method  which 
ordains  that  things  shall  precede  words.  Rousseau  went  so 
far  in  this  direction  that  he  admitted  no  other  means  but 
travel  for  learning  geography.  But  here,  as  always,  he  goes 
astray  through  the  exaggeration  of  a  just  idea.  But  he  at 
least  defines  with  wisdom  the  starting-point  of  all  geograph- 
ical instruction. 

"  For  Emile  the  two  first  points  in  geography  shall  be  the 
city  where  he  lives  and  the  country  residence  of  his  father; 
then  the  intermediate  places,  next  the  rivers  in  the  vicinity.  .  .  . 
Let  him  make  a  map  of  all  this  for  himself."  l 

Pestalozzi,  like  Rousseau,  demanded  that  the  teaching  of 
geography  should  be  connected  with  the  first  sensations  of 
infancy.  At  Burgdorf  he  made  the  pupils  observe  the 
little  tract  of  country  where  they  lived,  not  upon  a  map,  but 
upon  the  very  soil. 

Through  the  sight  of  actual  things  he  gave  them  an  idea 
of  hills,  mountains,  rivers,  and  of  the  various  geographical 
features.  Then,  when  the  child,  through  direct  intuition, 
or  at  least  by  analogy,  by  proceeding  from  the  small  to  the 

1  Emile,  Book  III. 


364  PRACTICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

great,  from  the  puddle  of  water  to  the  sea,  from  a  ditch  to  a 
river,  has  acquired  a  knowledge  of  the  terms  in  physical 
geography,  Pestalozzi  initiated  him  into  political  geography 
by  analogous  methods.  Taking  as  a  starting-point  the 
family  residence,  he  thence  directed  the  children's  attention 
to  the  village,  the  church,  the  school-house,  the  mayor's 
office,  the  route  which  led  to  the  city,  the  city  itself,  and  to 
the  magistrates  who  resided  there.  Finally,  proceeding  to 
mathematical  geography,  he  placed  the  pupil  in  presence  of 
astronomical  phenomena  and  made  him  observe  the  rising 
and  setting  of  the  sun,  the  Great  Bear  and  the  Pole-star ; 
thus  he  drilled  him  in  finding  the  points  of  the  compass,  and 
determining  the  position  of  one  place  through  its  relation  to 
another. 

384.  DEFINITION  OF  GEOGRAPHY.  —  It  would  not  be  exact 
to  say,  with  an  American  author,  that  "  Geography  is  not  so 
much  a  science  in  itself,  as  it  is  a  collection  of  matter 
belonging  to  a  number  of  sciences."  1 

On  the  contrary,  the  object  of  geography  is  perfectly 
definite,  —  it  is  the  description  of  the  surface  of  the  earth; 
it  studies  everything  that  relates  to  the  form  of  our  globe, 
and  to  the  exterior  and  superficial  phenomena  of  the  earth  ; 
though  it  must  be  admitted  that  certain  geographers,  taking 
advantage  of  the  fact  that  their  science  has  some  sort  of 
relation  to  everything,  extend  their  domain  perhaps  beyond 
all  proper  bounds.  Geography  has  such  intimate  relations 
with  several  other  sciences  that  a  natural  tendency  impels 
the  geographer  to  pass  the  frontier  which  separates  it  from 
them. 

On  the  pretext  that  watercourses  are  fed  by  the  rain, 
geography  ought  not  to  permit  itself  to  become  a  course  in 
physics  and  in  meteorology.  Because  the  description  of  the 

1  Wickersham.  Methods  of  Instruction,  p.  367. 


THE   TEACHING   OF   GEOGRAPHY.  365 

soil  affords  an  indication  of  the  nature  of  the  rocks,  geog- 
raphy must  not  be  confounded  with  geology.  And  so  with 
botany,  zoology,  and  political  economy ;  we  must  not  take 
advantage  of  their  relations  with  geographical  studies,  to 
trespass  upon  their  peculiar  domain. 

This  caution  has  not  always  been  observed.  Thus  Mr. 
Bain  takes  as  a  starting-point  in  the  study  of  geography 
a  series  of  lessons  upon  tools  and  instruments,  minerals, 
plants,  and  animals.  In  our  opinion,  geography  must  not  be 
encumbered  with  these  parasitic  notions  which  have  only  an 
indirect  relation  to  its  proper  object. 

But  we  would  not  forbid  the  teacher  of  geography  to  make 
any  incursion  on  the  subjects  that  border  on  the  study  of 
geography  itself.  It  is  both  profitable  and  interesting  to 
enrich  this  subject  in  every  way  possible,  as  by  giving  an 
explanation  of  the  facts  which  it  relates,  or  by  giving  ani- 
mation to  the  instruction  by  interesting  and  fruitful  com- 
parisons. 

385.  THE  UTILITY  OF  GEOGRAPHY.  —  First,  geography 
pursues  the  same  end  as  history.  If,  so  to  speak,  the  his- 
tory of  France  is  the  soul  of  the  country,  the  national 
geography  is  its  body.  In  its  way  it  teaches  patriotism  by 
making  known  the  territory  of  the  country,  and  the  frontiers 
that  have  been  lost  and  those  that  have  been  saved  ;  and  by 
making  the  child  love  the  beautiful  soil  of  France,  its  agree- 
able and  temperate  climate,  and  the  natural  riches  that  make 
it  a  privileged  country. 

The  Pere  Girard,  in  his  Explication  du  plan  de  Fribourg, 
exhibited,  though  with  some  exaggeration,  the  moral  bear- 
ings of  geography. 

"  Geography,"  he  said,  "  is  marvelously  adapted  to  this  sublime 
purpose.  .  .  Let  the  reader  judge  of  this  from  the  following 
essay.  As  an  harmonious  whole,  it  is  an  introduction  to  social 


366        '  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

life,  which  speaks  to  the  sense  and  to  the  mind,  and  which  surely 
ought  to  say  something  to  the  heart.  It  is  calculated  to  inspire 
love  of  country  and  the  emotions  which  are  associated  with  it." 

However,  let  us  not  overstate  the  case  and  say  that  the 
principal  aim  of  geographical  instruction  is  to  develop  the 
intelligence  and  the  heart,  ' '  to  stimulate  the  religious  senti- 
ment." No  ;  geography  is  chiefly  valuable  on  the  score  of 
its  practical  utility.  It  furnishes  the  future  artisan  with  the 
necessary  knowledge,  the  positive  notions,  which  he  will  need 
in  his  trade  or  industry.  Besides,  it  has  the  merit  of  intro- 
ducing the  mind  to  the  world  of  science  proper,  and  of  reveal- 
ing to  it  some  of  the  laws  of  nature.1 

386.  DIVISION  OF  GEOGRAPHY.  —  Everybody  understands 
the  distinction  between  physical  geography  and  political 
geography.  • 

Physical  geography,  says  the  Dictionnaire  of  Littre,  is  the 
description  of  the  earth  with  respect  to  the  division  of  its 
surface  into  continents,  oceans,  valleys,  mountains,  etc. 

Political  geography  is  the  description  of  the  earth  with 
respect  to  societies  and  states. 

In  other  terms,  physical  geography  studies  the  natural 
features  of  the  earth,  while  political  geography  adds  to  these 
the  consideration  of  the  work  of  man,  the  description  of  the 
inhabitants,  of  their  industries,  and  of  their  social  life. 

It  is  evident  that  the  study  of  physical  geography  should 
precede  that  of  political  geography,  but  it  may  be  profitable, 
even  in  an  elementary  course,  to  unite  the  two  subjects,  were 
it  only  to  create  an  interest. 

"  Ordinarily,  physical  geography  is  sharply  distinguished  from 
political  geography.  This  separation  is  a  mistake,  and  hardly 

1  For  a  somewhat  different  yiew  of  the  value  of  geography,  see 
Appendix  D. 


IHE  TEACHING  OF  GEOGRAPHY.         367 

facilitates  the  process  of  learning  quickly  and  well.  On  the 
contrary,  the  practice  of  teaching  proves  that  physical  and  polit- 
ical details  are  mutually  complementary  and  helpful,  and  that 
the  former  aids  in  retaining  the  latter,  and  vice  versa."  * 

There  is  still  to  be  distinguished  astronomical  geography, 
which  is  a  description  of  the  earth  with  reference  to  the 
heavens,  the  climates,  and  the  seasons  ;  and  economic  geog- 
raphy, which  treats  of  the  industrial  productions  of  each 
country,  of  agriculture  and  commerce.  But  the  first  may, 
in  a  sense,  be  connected  with  physical  geography,  and  the 
second  with  political  geography. 

Mr.  Bain  gives  a  very  high  significance  to  physical  geog- 
raphy, which  holds  an  intermediate  place,  he  says,  between 
the  ordinary  geography  and  the  higher  sciences,  physics, 
chemistry,  meteorology,  botany,  zoology,  and  geology.  It 
introduces  considerations  of  cause  and  effect  into  geographi- 
cal facts,  by  selecting  and  stating  in  empirical  form  the  prin- 
ciples methodically  taught  in  the  regular  and  fundamental 
sciences. 

"A  course  of  physical  geography  is  subsequent  and  sup- 
plementary to  proper  geography,"  -  which  Mr.  Bain  calls 
descriptive  geography,  —  "  while  reacting  upon  it  in  a  way 
that  causation  operates  upon  the  knowledge  of  facts."  2 

M.  Buisson  has  eloquently  characterized  the  scope  of  an 
advanced  instruction  in  physical  and  political  geography. 

"Through  the  progress  accomplished  in  their  respective  domains 
by  the  physical  and  natural  sciences,  and  also  by  the  historical 
and  political  sciences,  geography  neither  is  nor  can  be  any  longer 
an  isolated  and  restricted  science.  It  does  not  merely  describe, 
but  it  explains.  The  sight  of  actual  phenomena  suggests  both 
for  the  past  and  for  the  future  the  most  fruitful  inductions :  irreg- 
ularities of  surface,  which  were  formerly  regarded  as  so  many 


1  M.  Foncin,  Le  Deuxiemc  A  nnc'e  dc  geographic. 

2  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  279. 


368  PKACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

freaks  of  nature,  have  found  their  laws,  their  causes,  their  place, 
in  one  universal  harmony.  The  whole  surface  of  the  earth  be- 
comes a  living  and  moving  world,  and  the  monotony  or  the 
disorder  which  ignorance  saw  in  them  gives  place  to  lofty  gen- 
eral conceptions,  as  important  for  their  practical  applications  as 
for  their  scientific  import.  It  is  no  longer  required  to  retain 
names,  but  to  grasp  grand  phenomena,  both  in  their  aggregate 
and  in  their  details.  It  is  the  physiognomy  of  a  whole  oro- 
graphic  relief,  of  a  whole  hydrographic  system,  which  must  be 
considered;  it  is  the  structure  and  the  configuration  of  each 
region  which  must  be  grasped  in  order  to  connect  with  them  the 
innumerable  phenomena  which  depend  upon  them,  and  no  one 
of  which  is  a  thing  of  chance,  from  the  peculiarities  of  soil  and 
climate  to  those  of  the  fauna  and  the  flora  which  are  there  de- 
veloped. 

When  we  come  to  know  in  this  way  the  physical  theatre  where 
human  activity  is  to  be  displayed,  is  there  anything  richer  in  the 
way  of  instruction  than  historical,  political,  and  statistical  geog- 
raphy? The  moment  we  enter  upon  this  science,  the  study  con- 
stantly presents  a  double  movement,  that  which  is  exercised  on 
man  by  the  situation,  climate,  form,  and  nature  of  the  country 
where  he  lives,  and  in  return  that  which  man  displays  for  modi- 
fying all  these  circumstances,  for  opposing  them,  or  for  making 
use  of  them  for  deriving  profit  from  the  earth  and  the  soil,  the 
air  and  the  sea,  according  to  the  degree  of  intelligence  and  energy 
with  which  he  is  endowed.  Thus  the  study  of  geography  is  not 
divorced  from  that  of  civilization ;  it  is  a  sort  of  universal  mon- 
ument, on  which  is  engraved  in  all  its  striking  episodes,  from  the 
age  of  caverns  and  lake-dwellings  to  the  hour  in  which  we  now 
live,  the  history  of  the  influences  of  nature  on  man,  and  of  the 
conquests  of  man  over  nature.  It  is  of  this  science,  thus  under- 
stood, that  Herder  was  able  to  say  with  exultation,  '  Charge 
geography  with  aridity  1  We  might  as  well  charge  the  ocean  with 
dryness.' " l 

387.   WHY  THIS  STUDY  SHOULD  BEGIN  EARLY.  — As  Nicole 
1  L'Instruction  primaire  a  Vienne,  p.  185. 


THE   TEACHING  OF  GEOGRAPHY.  369 

had  already  remarked,  "Geography  is  a  study  very  proper 
for  children ; "  first,  because  it  depends  greatly  upon  the 
senses  ;  then,  because  it  is  really  entertaining  ;  finally,  be- 
cause it  requires  no  reasoning,  which  is  well-nigh  lacking 
at  that  age. 

Let  us  add  that  other  studies  cannot  dispense  with  geog- 
raphy. History  and  geography  should  go  hand  in  hand. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  Mr.  Bain's  opinion  that  the  study  of 
geography  should  be  delayed,  on  the  ground  that  geographi- 
cal notions  involve  the  faculty  of  pure  conception,  — that  is, 
of  the  representative  imagination,  without  any  appeal  to 
emotion  and  sentiment.  But,  in  opposition  to  Mr.  Bain,  we 
think  that  the  faculty  of  concrete  conception  is  highly  devel- 
oped in  the  child,  and  besides,  that  it  is  possible  to  give  a 
living  interest  to  the  study  of  geography. 

388.  Two  METHODS  POSSIBLE. — In  history  we  raised  the 
question  whether  it  was  best  on  the  start  to  give  the  child 
a  general  view  of  the  course  of  the  centuries,  or  to  proceed 
by  partial  studies  and  by  periods.  Likewise  in  geography  it 
is  a  question  whether  it  is  better  at  first  to  give  a  general 
idea  of  the  whole  world,  or  to  concentrate  the  beginner's 
attention  exclusively  on  the  geography  of  his  own  country, 
and  not  undertake  the  geography  of  Europe  and  the  globe 
till  a  later  period. 

The  reply  cannot  be  doubtful.  The  point  of  departure  in 
geographical  instruction  is  certainly  in  the  study  of  local 
geography.  Between  the  ancient  system,  which  first  studied 
the  globe,  which  began  where  we  ought  to  finish,  as  Pere 
Greard  said,  and  the  new  method,  which  starts  from  the  vil- 
lage or  the  city  where  the  pupil  lives,  and  extends  from 
place  to  place  till  it  finally  embraces  the  entire  earth,  there 
can  be  no  hesitation  in  our  choice. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  child  must  not  be  kept  too  long 


370  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

on  these  preparatory  studies.  The  teaching  of  geography,  — 
that  is,  a  science  whose  object  is  the  description  of  the 
earth, — would  not  respond  to  its  definition  nor  to  its  purpose, 
if  the  child  were  not  placed  as  soon  as  possible  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  earth.  General  geography  ought  to  be  united 
and  combined  with  local  geography.  All  portions  of  geog- 
raphy are  in  some  sort  co-ordinate,  while  the  periods  of 
history,  to  a  certain  extent,  are  independent  one  of  another. 
Hence  a  profound  difference  in  the  methods  to  be  followed. 

"  After  the  preliminary  notions  drawn  from  the  child's  knowl- 
edge of  the  department,  and  before  he  enters  upon  a  detailed 
study  of  France,  I  would  have  the  teacher,"  says  M.  Levasseur,  an 
authority  on  this  subject,  "  with  globe  in  hand,  give  in  a  few 
hours  a  general  idea  of  the  form  of  the  earth  and  of  its  oceans 
and  continents.  It  is  important  that  the  child  should  clearly 
know  what  place  France  occupies  in  Europe,  the  situation  of 
Europe  upon  the  globe,  and  what  the  form  of  the  earth  is."  1 

389.  NATIONAL  GEOGRAPHY.  — The  centre  of  geographical 
instruction  in  the  common  school  ought  to  be  our  own  coun- 
try. In  French  schools,  France  is  the  point  of  departure 
and  the  goal  of  the  geographical  excursion  which  is  pro- 
posed to  the  child ;  but  there  are  rightly  added  to  this 
general  notions  of  the  geography  of  Europe  and  of  other 
parts  of  the  world,  just  as  in  history  the  national  history  is 
completed  by  some  notions  of  general  history. 

And  as  in  history  it  is  necessary  for  real  mental  enlighten- 
ment to  compare  the  present  with  the  past,  so  in  geography 
it  is  well  to  institute  frequent  comparisons  between  one's  own 
country  and  foreign  countries. 

"  Tell  the  pupil  that  France  produces  seventeen  million  tons 
of  coal  a  year,  and  he  yawns  and  at  once  forgets  the  number ; 
but  tell  him  that  France  produces  only  one-eighth  as  much  coal 

1  As  to  sequence  in  the  study  of  geography,  see  Appendix  A. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  GEOGRAPHY.         371 

as  England,  and  he  understands  you,  and,  as  a  Frenchman,  is 
touched  to  the  quick." 

390.  THE  CORRECT  METHOD.  —  Then  let  us  follow  the 
method  which  consists  in  starting  from  the  village  school, 
but  on  the  condition  that  we  do  not  forget  to  go  farther.  A 
teacher  may  halt  so  long  in  giving  details  on  the  commune 
and  the  canton  that  at  the  end  of  several  months  he  has  not 
gone  beyond  them.  As  soon  as  possible  the  instruction  in 
geography  should  open  vast  horizons  to  the  child,  and  ex- 
tend his  vision  over  the  entire  world. 

"  Certainly,"  says  M.  Elisee  Reclus,  "  we  must  always  take  as  a 
starting-point  what  the  child  sees  ;  but  does  he  see  nothing  more 
than  the  school  and  his  village?  That  is  the  tip  of  his  abode; 
he  also  sees  the  infinite  heaven,  the  sun,  stars,  and  moon.  He 
sees  the  storms,  the  clouds,  the  rain,  the  distant  horizon,  the 
mountains,  the  hills,  the  downs  or  simple  undulations,  and  trees 
and  shrubs.  Let  him  attentively  notice  all  these  things,  and  let 
them  be  described  to  him.  This  is  the  real  geography,  and  to 
learn  it  the  child  has  not  to  go  beyond  the  things  which  surround 
him,  and  which  are  exhibited  to  him  in  their  infinite  variety." 

To-day  the  method  of  geographical  teaching  seems  to  be 
everywhere  established  in  accordance  with  this  spirit.  Mr. 
Bain  says  "that  geography,  after  arithmetic,  is  the  study 
that  is  most  advanced  in  respect  of  method."  This  method 
may  be  defined  as  follows  : 

"  The  teacher  will  speak  to  the  children  principally  of  the 
things  they  have  seen.  After  a  rain  he  will  show  them  the 
ravines  which  the  water  has  worn  in  the  sand  of  the  yard,  the 
manner  in  which  this  water  forms  lakes,  surrounds  islands,  de- 
scends slopes  in  thin  streams  which  finally  unite  to  form  large 
brooks  farther  down,  and  explain  to  them  how  they  have  before 
their  eyes  a  picture  in  miniature  of  rivers  and  of  their  affluents. 

"  He  will  make  them  notice  that  the  sun  illumines  the  school  iu 


372  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

a  different  way  morning   and   evening,  and   will  teach  them  to 
know  ths  points  of  the  compass  and  to  find  their  bearings. 

"  He  will  trace  for  them  the  plan  of  the  school  on  the  board,  and 
accustom  them  to  distinguish  what  is  at  the  right  from  what  is 
at  the  left,  what  is  in  front  from  what  is  in  the  rear.  He  will 
not  fear  to  insist  on  this  process,  to  measure  if  need  be,  in  the 
presence  of  the  children  and  with  their  aid,  the  length  of  the 
walls,  the  width  of  the  court  and  the  garden,  and  to  record  these 
measurements  on  the  board.  He  will  also  trace  a  plan  of  the 
neighborhood  of  the  school,  or  even  of  the  village,  and  will  have 
attained  his  purpose  in  this  respect  when  his  pupils  are  capable 
of  showing  upon  this  plan,  with  the  pointer,  the  road  which  must 
be  followed  to  go  from  the  church  to  their  homes." 

391.  THE  FUNCTION  OF  MEMORY. — Formerly  geography 
was  recited ;  to-day  it  is  at  the  same  time  told  and  shown. 
It  is  told,  —  that  is,  the  teacher  gives  an  exposition  of  the 
subject :  he  gives  a  lesson  in  geography  as  he  does  in  his- 
tory. It  is  shown,  —  that  is,  an  incessant  appeal  is  made, 
either  to  the  very  reality  or  to  a  picture  of  it  reproduced  by 
maps. 

"With  very  young  children,"  says  M.  Levasseur,  "the  teacher 
will  scarcely  indicate  the  relations  of  cause  and  effect,  which  or- 
dinarily surpass  the  ability  of  a  nascent  intelligence ;  he  will 
rely  on  descriptions,  and  he  will  cause  the  different  conceptions  of 
geography  to  be  understood,  as  much  as  possible  by  pictures,  by 
sensible  forms,  and  whenever  possible  by  the  sight  of  the  objects 
themselves  and  by  familiar  examples." 

However,  there  is  a  part  for  memory  to  play ;  in  all  grades 
of  geographical  study  there  are  things  which  the  child  ought 
to  be  capable  of  reciting.  As  the  multiplication-table  is 
not  learned  without  a  mechanical  and  habitual  use  of  the 
memory,  so  we  cannot  dispense  with  learning  by  heart  the 
names  of  geographical  positions. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  GEOGKAPHY.         373 

"  The  teaching  of  the  geographical  nomenclature  seems  to  us  to 
be  one  of  the  three  principal  points  in  the  study  of  geography,  and 
this  nomenclature  ought  to  be  learned  by  heart.  We  first  cause 
the  word  to  be  learned,  without  which  the  precision  of  the  idea 
would  be  lost;  but  let  us  illustrate  this  nomenclature  by  such 
notions  as  will  give  to  each  word  a  fit  idea."  1 

Of  course  these  words,  at  the  same  time  that  they  are 
intrusted  to  the  memory,  ought  to  be  localized  on  the  map 
by  the  imagination  of  the  child. 

392.  MAPS  IN  GENERAL. — Geography  has  always  been 
learned  by  the  aid  of  maps ;    but  it  is  particularly  in  our 
time  that  the  process  of  map-making  has  been  perfected  and 
really  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  child. 

"  Means  of  expression  in  geography,"  says  M.  Buisson,  "  are  be- 
coming perfected  so  rapidly  that  before  long  the  entire  ancient 
system  of  cartography  will  be  no  more  than  a  dead  language."  2 

Without  entering  into  details  which  would  be  appropriate 
in  a  complete  study  of  the  subject,  and  which  will  be  found 
in  special  works,  let  us  indicate  at  least  a  few  essential 
points. 

We  must  first  distinguish  ready-made  maps  which  are 
shown  to  the  pupil  from  those  which  he  is  required  to  pre- 
pare for  himself. 

Ready-made  maps  are  either  maps  in  atlas  form  or  wall- 
maps. 

393.  MAPS  IN  ATLAS  FORM.  —  These  maps  are  made  to 
be  seen  near  at  hand  and  to  give  detailed  information ;  but 
there  is  danger,  however,  of  placing  too  much  upon  them, 
and  of  multiplying  the  signs  so  as  to  prevent  a  clear  and 

1  Article  Geographic,  in  the  THctionnairc  de  P<fdfigogie. 

2  IS  Instruction  primaire  a  Vienne,  p.  186. 


374  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

definite  view.  The  best  will  be  the  simplest  and  the  clear- 
est. The  most  scientific  and  the  most  beautiful  are  not 
always  the  most  useful  from  an  educational  point  of  view. 

The  custom  has  now  been  introduced  of  no  longer  separat- 
ing the  map  from  the  text ;  but  separate  atlases  should  not 
be  discarded. 

394.  WALL-MAPS. — Wall-maps    are    not  less    necessary 
than  maps  in  atlas  form.     They  are  made  to  be  seen  at  a 
distance,  to  give  contours,  broad  lines,  and  general  views. 
They  are  especially  designed  to  call  into  play  the  faculties 
of   the   child,  his   memory  and  his   reason.     It   is   on  the 
smaller  maps  that  he  first  learns  geography ;  but  it  is  on 
the  wall-map  that  the  pupil  is  interrogated,  and  this  is  why 
certain  geographers  think  that  this  study-map  ought  by  pref- 
erence to  be  unlettered.     It  is  with  the  same  intent  that  on 
German  wall-maps  the  names  of  rivers  and  mountains  are 
written  in  very  small  characters,  so  that  pupils  cannot  read 
them  mechanically  and  are  obliged  to   recognize  them  by 
their  form  and  position. 

"Wall-maps,"  says  M.  Buisson,  "are  the  most  important  geo- 
graphical apparatus  of  the  primary  school.  The  Germans  have 
seen  sooner  than  we  have  all  the  importance  which  is  to  be  as- 
cribed to  them.  The  great  physical  maps  of  the  five  divisions  of 
the  world,  by  Von  Sydow,  have  made  an  epoch  in  geographical 
teaching;  they  have  proved  that  we  can  place  within  the  range 
of  the  schools  a  graphic  representation,  at  once  compendious 
enough  to  be  very  striking  and  scientific  enough  to  give  of  each 
important  division  an  exact,  if  not  complete,  idea."1 

395.  RELIEF  MAPS.  — The  services  which  can  be  rendered 
by  relief  maps  are  universally  recognized.     "  What  is  done 
on  ordinary  maps  may  be  done  at  least  with  as  much  advan- 

1  L' Instruction  primaire  a  Vienne,  p.  196. 


THE   TEACHING    OF   GEOGRAPHY.  375 

tage  on  relief  maps  representing  the  different  geographical 
features,  or  merely  those  of  such  or  such  a  country."  * 

Of  course  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against  exaggeration 
in  such  matters.  Ingenuity  has  taken  hold  of  relief  maps, 
and  has  often  made  of  them  a  fancy  article,  purely  conven- 
tional, a  plaything  rather  than  an  instrument  of  study.2 

But,  with  these  reservations,  it  is  undeniable  that  relief 
maps  are  the  best  of  all  for  giving  the  child  an  exact  idea  of 
the  country,  for  raising  him  to  the  conception  of  the  reality 
of  which  the  map  is  but  a  picture.8 

396.  MAPS  DRAWN  BY  THE  PUPIL.  —  The  first  thing  to  do, 
and  it  is  not  without  difficulty,  is  to  teach  pupils  to  read  the 
map  and  to  find  their  own  place  upon  it.  The  official  pro- 
gramme recommends  that  in  the  elementary  course  there 
be  simply  given  an  idea  of  the  mode  of  representation  by 
maps  and  that  the  child  be  drilled  in  the  reading  of  plans 
and  maps ;  but  for  the  intermediate  and  higher  courses,  it 
demands  exercises  in  map-drawing  on  the  blackboard  and 
on  paper,  without  tracing,  and  also  exercises  in  map- 
drawing  from  memory. 

These  exercises  need  no  justification.  They  train  the 
pupil's  hand,  they  are  a  preparation  for  drawing,  and  are 
the  most  direct  means  of  fixing  geographical  facts  in  the 
mind. 

"  The  drawing  of  maps,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "  impresses  a 
country,  just  as  copying  a  passage  in  a  book  impresses  the 
author's  language  and  meaning." 

But  care  must  be  taken  not  to  make  a  misuse  of  exercises 
in  map-drawing,  the  first  defect  of  which,  when  indiscreetly 

1  Conduite  des  fcoles  chrrtiennes,  p.  69. 

2  The  most  valuable  helps  to  geography  are  models,  and  if  these 
could  be  multiplied  in  schools  the  conceptions  of  the  general  form  of 
countries  would  be  vastly  enhanced.    (Bain,  op.  cit.,  p.  276.) 


376  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

employed,  is  to  take  altogether  too  much  time.  Specialists 
recommend  that  there  be  required  only  map-drawings  but 
slightly  complicated  and  comprised  within  natural  limits ; 
this  last  recommendation  excludes  maps  which  represent 
only  an  isolated  department. 

397.  THE  GLOBE. — The  inventive  art  of  our  contempo- 
raries has  devised  even  globes  in  relief ;  but  these  attempts 
"  seem  destined,"  says  M.  Buisson,  "  to  give  intuitions  that 
are  grossly  false,"  without  any  advantage  to  compensate  for 
this  greater  disadvantage. 

It  is  otherwise  with  ordinary  globes,  which  render  impor- 
tant services  to  instruction. 

"  Besides  cosmographic  notions,  the  indispensable  complement 
of  geography,  there  is  a  mass  of  large  comparisons  between  seas, 
continents,  divisions,  and  configurations  of  the  earth's  surface, 
which  are  almost  impossible  without  the  frequent  use  of  the 
sphere."  l 

398.  TEXT-BOOKS.  —  "  Formerly,"   says     M.    Buisson, 
"  these  were  the  principal  means  of  instruction.     Geogra- 
phy was  taught  from  a  compendium  of  a  few  pages  bristling 
with  proper  names,  and  calculated  to  repel  the   mind   the 
most  thirsty  for  knowledge."     However,  the  text-book  must 
not  be  absolutely  proscribed ;  it  is  sufficient  to  reduce  the 
importance  which  it  had  in  the  old  methods.     It  is  especially 
necessary  that  it  be  well  written,  that  the  text  always  be 
illustrated  by  a  map  placed  on  the  opposite  page,  and  if 
need  be  by  illustrations.     The  Americans  have  brought  into 
fashion,  and  the  French  have  copied  from  them,  these  ele- 
mentary books  in  which  the  child  finds,  along  with  the  defini- 
tion of   geographical  terms,  a  gulf,   an  island,  a  cape,  a 
mountain,  at  the  same  time  delineated  in  a  picture  and  rep- 
resented on  a  small  map. 

1  Sclirader. 


THE   TEACHING   OF   GEOGRAPHY.  377 

399.  THE  FUNCTION  OF  THE  TEACHER.  — In  geography,  as 
in  other  subjects,  the  voice  of  the  teacher  is  the  great  teach- 
ing instrument.       It  impresses  on  the  intelligence   of   the 
pupil  the  first  decisive    impetus ;    it  illustrates  the   points 
that  are  obscure,   and  gives  animation  to   the   instruction. 
But  the  oral  exposition  of  geographical  notions  has  special 
need  of  being  sustained  by  a  collection  of  school  apparatus, 
by  the  geographical  aids  of  which  we  have  attempted  to  give 
an  idea. 

400.  CRITICAL    OBSERVATIONS.  —  Let  us  here  collect  for 
the  teaching  of  geography,  as  we  have  done  for  the  other 
branches  of  instruction,  some  of  the  critical  observations  of 
the  inspectors-general. 

"  Geography  is  made  an  exercise  of  the  memory.  Instruction 
is  given  from  the  book,  and  not  from  the  map.  Geography  is 
regarded  as  hardly  more  than  a  knowledge  of  names.  Enough 
geographical  sketches  are  not  made  on  the  blackboard.  The 
study  of  geography  generally  begins  too  late.  Sufficient  use  is 
not  made  of  the  globes  which  adorn  the  teacher's  room  or  remain 
covered  with  dust.  Pupils  do  not  know  what  latitude  and  longi- 
tude are.  Too  much  stress  is  put  on  geographical  terms,  which, 
instead  of  being  presented  to  the  child  in  succession,  and  to  meet 
the  wants  of  each  lesson,  are  taught  in  a  mass  before  going  to 
anything  else." 

Finally,  geography  ought  to  become  more  and  more  a 
knowledge  of  things,  and  not,  as  it  formerly  was,  a  knowl- 
edge of  words.  It  ought  to  be  a  prolific  mine  of  positive 
knowledge,  which  gives  the  child  information,  not  only  on 
the  natural  features  and  physical  phenomena  of  his  country, 
but  also  on  its  industrial  resources  and  its  economic  phe- 
nomena. Moreover,  it  will  not  limit  its  instruction  to  the 
sentimental  frontiers  of  France.  In  a  time  when  the  coun- 
try is  making  great  efforts  to  develop  its  colonial  power  and 


378  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

its  territories  beyond  sea,  it  is  right  and  it  is  necessary  that 
geography  should  make  known  to  the  sons  of  our  working- 
men  and  peasants  the  physical  and  economical  resources  of 
distant  countries.  By  this  means  there  will  be  developed 
among  some  of  them  a  taste  for  travel  and  colonial  enter- 
prises, and  our  possessions  will  not  remain  colonies  without 
colonists. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  TEACHING  OF  THE  SCIENCES. 

401.  THE  TEACHING  OP    THE  SCIENCES  IN  THE  COMMON 
SCHOOL.  —  Instruction  in  the  sciences  has  been  noticeably 
enlarged  and  developed  in  the  programme  of  our  common 
schools.     At  all  times  arithmetic  has  been  taught  in  them, 
and  constituted,  with  reading  and  writing,  the  three  elements 
of  the  old  instruction;  but  to-day  the  programme  comprises, 
besides  arithmetic,  geometry,  and  also  the  ordinary  elements 
of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences. 

402.  IMPORTANCE    OF     ARITHMETIC.  —  Belgian     teachers 
count  no  less  than  twelve  distinct  results  from  the  teaching 
of  arithmetic.     Without  desiring  to  adopt  an  enumeration  so 
complicated  and  so  pedantic,  we  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  arithmetic,  of  all  the  subjects  taught  in  the  school,  is 
the  one  that  contributes  most  to  the  training  and  develop- 
ment  of   the    faculties   of    reflection,   and  particularly   the 
reason.      Doubtless  grammar,  history,  and  geography,  when 
well  taught,   may  co-operate  in  this  education  ;    but  while 
they  call  into  exercise  the  reason  only  occasionally  and  acci- 
dentally,  we  may  affirm  that  arithmetic  gives    it   constant 
exercise. 

The  abstract  sciences  in  general,  proceeding  by  trains  of 
reasoning  and  rigorous  demonstrations,  have  the  farther 
advantage  of  compelling  the  mind  not  to  be  satisfied  with 
mere  words.  They  accustom  it  to  demand  perfect  clearness, 

absolute  precision,  logical  and  concise  sequence. 

379 


380  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

"  Mathematics  .  .  .  has  a  marked  and  peculiar  method  or  char- 
acter ;  it  is  by  pre-eminence  deductive  or  demonstrative,  and  exhib- 
its in  a  nearly  perfect  form  all  the  machinery  belonging  to  this 
mode  of  obtaining  truth.  Laying  down  a  very  small  number  of 
first  principles,  either  self-evident  or  requiring  very  little  effort  to 
prove  them,  it  evolves  a  vast  number  of  deductive  truths  and 
applications,  by  a  procedure  in  the  highest  degree  mathematical 
and  systematic.  Now,  although  it  is  chiefly  in  the  one  domain  of 
Quantity  that  this  machinery  has  its  fullest  scope,  yet,  as  in  every 
subject  that  the  mind  has  to  discuss  there  is  a  frequent  resort  to 
the  deductive,  demonstrative,  or  downward  procedure,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  direct  appeal  to  observation,  fact,  or  induction, 
a  mathematical  training  is  a  fitting  equipment  for  the  exercises  of 
this  function.  The  rigid  definition  of  all  leading  terms  and  no- 
tions ;  the  explicit  statement  of  all  the  first  principles ;  the  onward 
march  by  successive  deductions,  each  one  reposing  on  ground 
already  secured ;  no  begging  of  either  premises  or  conclusions ;  no 
surreptitious  admissions ;  no  shifting  of  ground ;  no  vacillation  in 
the  meanings  of  terms ;  —  all  this  is  implied  in  the  perfect  type 
of  a  deductive  science.  The  pupil  should  be  made  to  feel  that  he 
has  accepted  nothing  without  a  clear  and  demonstrative  reason, 
to  the  entire  exclusion  of  authority,  tradition,  prejudice,  or  self- 
interest."  1 

Of  course  it  is  principally  an  advanced  course  in  mathe- 
matics which  admits  of  these  characteristics  and  assures 
these  advantages  to  the  general  training  of  the  mind  ;  but 
even  in  its  elementary  stage  the  study  of  the  mathematics 
will  result  on  the  start  in  imposing  on  the  pupil  a  great  con- 
centration of  attention ;  for  in  mathematical  truths  there 
is  complete  interdependence  and  connection,  and  a  single 
moment  of  inattention  causes  the  whole  fruit  of  previous  toil 
to  b6  lost.  Besides,  the  rigorous  character  of  mathematical 
demonstration  accustoms  the"  pupil  not  to  take  up  with 
words,  not  to  yield  except  on  proof.  There  is  no  better 

1  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  pp.  148,  149. 


THE   TEACHING  OF  THE   SCIENCES.  381 

school  for  teaching  order,  precision,  and  at  the  same  time 
continuity  aud  rigor  in  thinking.1 

403.  PRACTICAL  UTILITY  OF  ARITHMETIC.  —  But  without 
speaking  longer  of  the  advantages  of  arithmetical  study  con- 
sidered as  a  mental  discipline,  it  is  evident  that  this  instruc- 
tion is  indispensable  by  reason  of  its  practical  utility.     To 
know  how  to  compute  is  but  little  less  necessary  than  to 
know  how  to  read  and  write.     Even  ignorant  peasants  who 
can  do  without  reading  to  no  great  disadvantage,  cannot  do 
without  making  simple  calculations  as  to  their  expenses,  the 
wages  they  ought  to  receive,  the  sacks  of  wheat  which  they 
have  to  sell,  and  the  animals  which  they  tend.     Computation 
is  of  daily  and  universal  use. 

404.  THE  CHILD'S    TASTE  FOR   NUMBERS. — We  might 
think  that  on  account  of  their  general  character  of  abstrac- 
tion, exercises  in  number  would  not  suit  the  taste  of  the 
child,  fond  above  all  else  of  sense  perceptions.     But  this  is 
not  so. 

"  In  the  large  number  of  classes  of  very  different  grades  which 
it  has  been  our  privilege  either  to  inspect  or  to  visit,  we  have  often 
observed  that  arithmetic  was  one  of  the  things  with  reference  to 
which  the  child  manifested  the  most  vividly  that  joy  in  learning 
which  comes  to  him  so  naturally,  when  we  do  not  carefully  spoil  it 
by  throwing  around  him  things  that  are  difficult  and  incoherent."  2 


1  "  Numbers,"  says  M.  Frieh,  "  is  a  positive  science,  and  there  are 
no  two  different  ways  of  conceiving  its  primal  elements.     In  it  every- 
thing is  fixed  and  invariable,  so  that  the  wisest  mathematician  and  the 
youngest  pupil  of  a  primary  school  find  the  same  result  by  employing 
exactly  the  same  process.     What  is  particularly  remarkable  in  the 
science  of  numbers  is  that  everything  is  related  and  connected  with 
a  precision  that  is  perfect ;  one  notion  prepares  for  another,  and  one 
principle  gives  rise  to  another." 

2  Mademoiselle  Chalamet,  op.  cit.,  p.  106. 


382  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

405.  THREE  COURSES  IN  ARITHMETIC.  —  In  all  the  grades 
of  the  common  school  the  programme  requires  exercises  in 
mental  and  written  arithmetic ;  but  it  distributes  the  matter 
of  instruction  progressively,  reserving  theory  mainly  for  the 
higher  course. 

In  the  elementary  course  the  four  rules  may  be  applied 
intuitively  to  numbers  that  do  not  exceed  100.  So  much  for 
mental  arithmetic.  The  tables  of  addition  and  multiplica- 
tion are  studied.  For  written  work  pupils  are  drilled  on  the 
first  three  rules  by  the  use  of  whole  numbers.  Division  is 
limited  to  divisors  which  contain  no  more  than  two  figures. 
Simple  problems,  oral  or  written,  complete  the  instruction. 

In  the  intermediate  course,  after  a  review,  which  is  par- 
ticularly necessary  in  arithmetic,  in  a  science  where  sequence 
is  so  important,  the  division  of  whole  numbers  is  learned ; 
the  study  of  fractions  is  begun ;  the  four  rules  are  applied 
to  decimal  numbers ;  and  the  legal  system  of  weights  and 
measures  is  studied.  It  is  more  and  more  required  that  the 
problems  give  rise  to  rational  solutions. 

In  the  higher  course,  a  new  review  with  more  marked 
attention  to  theories  and  to  the  reasoning  process,  the  metric 
system  is  thoroughly  learned.  The  most  difficult  parts  of  the 
arithmetic  are  taken  up,  such  as  prime  numbers,  the  divisi- 
bility of  numbers,  prime  factors,  and  the  greatest  common 
divisor.  The  methods  of  reduction  to  unity,  applied  to 
the  solution  of  problems  in  interest,  discount,  etc.,  are  also 
studied. 

406.  GENERAL   METHOD.  —  Intuitive  in  its  early  stages, 
and  practical  at  every  step  in  its  development,  —  such  ought 
to  be  the  instruction  in  arithmetic  in  the  common  school. 
The  method  of  study  in  this  science  is  henceforth  fixed,  and 
Mr.  Bain  could  say  that  "  the  method  of  teaching  arithmetic 
is,  perhaps,  the  best  understood  of  any  of  the  methods  con- 
cerned with  elementary  studies." 


THE   TEACHING   OF   THE   SCIENCES.  383 

Let  us  add,  that  without  ceasing  to  be  practical  the  method 
in  arithmetic  should  tend  to  give  children  a  rational  knowl- 
edge of  the  science  of  computation.  It  is  not  enough  for 
the  child  to  be  mechanically  drilled  in  the  operations  of 
arithmetic ;  it  is  necessary  that  he  comprehend  them,  that 
he  render  to  himself  an  account  of  them.  By  this  means  he 
will  not  only  compute  better  and  more  surely,  but  his  mind 
will  at  the  same  time  be  strengthened  and  refined.  "  Par- 
ticularly in  arithmetic,  to  comprehend  is  to  apprehend." 

The  first  requirement  is  that  the  child  gain  an  exact  idea  of 
number,  —  an  idea  which  is  complete  only  when  it  contains 
the  ideas  of  augmentation  and  diminution,  of  addition  and 
subtraction. 

407.  MATERIAL  AIDS.  — As  a  means  of  making  a  begin- 
ning in  numeration,  educators  recommend  the  use  of  small 
pieces  of  wood.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  concrete  objects 
are  adapted  to  this  purpose,  and  the  choice  is  unimportant. 
The  essential  thing  is,  not  to  plunge  the  child  all  at  once  into 
the  study  of  abstract  numbers,  but  to  resort  at  first  to  in- 
tuition, to  intuitive  computation ;  and  for  this  purpose  real 
objects  should  be  employed,  placed  in  the  hands  of  the 
child,  or  points  and  lines  drawn  on  the  blackboard  and  pre- 
sented to  the  pupil's  eye. 

"  Much  is  involved  in  the  first  attempts  to  work  upon  number. 
The  distinction  between  one  number  and  another  is  shown  to  the 
eye  by  concrete  groups  of  various  things,  the  identity  cf  mini  tar 
appearing  under  disparity  of  materials  and  of  grouping.  Ideas 
are  thus  acquired  o£  unity,  of  two,  three,  etc.,  up  to  ten  in  a  row. 
.  .  .  At  the  outset  small  tangible  objects  are  used,  —  balls,  pebbles, 
coins,  apples ;  then  larger  objects,  as  chairs  and  pictures  on  a  wall. 
Finally  dots  or  short  lines,  or  some  other  plain  marks,  are  the 
representative  examples  to  be  deposited  in  the  mind  as  the  near- 
est approach  to  the  abstract  idea."  l 


1  Bain,  op.  cit.,  p.  288. 


384  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

408.  TRANSITION  FROM  THE  CONCRETE  TO  THE  ABSTRACT. — 
M.  Horner  very  clearly  states  the    process  to  be  followed 
for  gradually  withdrawing  the  mind  from  the  consideration 
of  concrete  objects  and  leading  it  to  the  abstract  notion.     It 
is  first  necessary,  he  says,  to  show  the  child  material  objects, 
or  at  least  strokes  drawn  on  the  board,  representing  numbers 
and  their  combinations.     Then,  when  the  child  has  gained 
sufficient  skill  to  work  with  objects,  we  must  conceal  these 
objects  from  his  sight  and  employ  concrete  numbers,  as  8 
nuts,   6  tables,  8  chairs,  etc.     A  new  step  has  now  been 
taken,  and  after  these  concrete  numbers  have  been  used  for 
some  time,  the  final  step  in  the  series  must  be  taken,  —  we 
must  divest  the  number  of  its  sensible  garment  and  employ 
abstract  numbers. 

409.  NUMERAL  FRAMES.  —  Instead  of  employing  the  first 
objects  at  hand,  we  may-  resort  to  apparatus,  especially  to 
numeral  frames,  which  are  machines  designed  to  facilitate 
the  early  steps  in  numeration. 

This  device  is  no  doubt  serviceable  #t  the  beginning  of 
instruction  in  number ;  but  we  must  guard  against  the  abuse 
of  these  material  means  of  numerical  intuition,  lest  they  go 
counter  to  the  end  we  are  pursuing. 

The  numeral  frame  has  been  severely  criticised. 

"This  instrument,"  says  M.  Eugene  Rambert,  "corrupts  instruc- 
tion in  arithmetic.  The  principal  utility  of  this  instruction  is  to 
call  into  early  exercise  the  child's  faculties  of  abstraction,  —  to 
teach  him  to  see  with  the  head,  through  the  eyes  of  the  mind. 
To  place  things  before  the  bodily  eyes  is  to  go  directly  counter  to 
the  spirit  of  this  instruction.  Nature  has  given  children  their  ten 
fingers  for  a  numeral  frame ;  and  instead  of  giving  them  another, 
they  should  be  taught  to  do  without  the  first  as  soon  as  possible. 
It  is  said  that  this  device  makes  the  teacher's  explanations  much 
easier.  I  have  no  doubt  of  this.  By  means  of  the  numeral  frame 
the  child  soon  makes  out  that  10  and  10  are  20;  but  the  child  who 


THE   TEACHING   OF   THE   SCIENCES.  385 

counts  only  in  this  way  loses  his  time,  while  the  one  who  has 
counted  in  his  head  has  engaged  in  the  most  useful  of  exercises. 
There  is  needed  a  complement  and  corrective  for  instruction 
through  the  sense  of  sight,  and  it  is  most  readily  found  in  com- 
putation." l 

There  is  some  exaggeration  in  this  sentiment,  and  it  would 
apply  more  justly  to  counting-machines.  Most  teachers 
recommend  the  numeral  frame  for  the  maternal  school,  and 
express  the  wish  that  it  may  be  introduced  into  the  common 
school,  at  least  for  the  elementary  course.  It  must  be  intel- 
ligently used,  however,  so  as  to  facilitate  the  pupil's  labor 
without  suppressing  it.2 

410.  COUNTING-MACHINES. — The  things  to  be  condemned 
without  hesitation  are  arithmometers,  or  counting-machines, 
very  complicated  pieces  of  mechanism,  real  mills,  which  fur- 
nish the  result  of  proposed  operations  and  relieve  the  pupil 
of  labor. 

The  use  of  apparatus,  whatever  it  may  be,  ought  not  to 
make  us  forget  the  necessity  of  mental  calculation. 

411.  MENTAL  ARITHMETIC.  —  Educational  opinion  is  defi- 
nitely settled  as  to  the  value  and  necessity  of  mental  arith- 
metic, — that  is,  of  computation  made  in  the  mind,  without 
resorting  to  written  numbers. 

First,  mental  arithmetic  is  an  excellent  mental  gymnastic, 
because  it  compels  the  attention  to  fall  back  upon  itself,  to 
occupy  itself  with  what  is  within,  without  the  aid  of  any 
material  instrument. 

Moreover,  mental  arithmetic  responds  to  the  necessities  of 

1  Quoted  by  M.  Buisson,  L' Instruction  primaire  a  Yienne,  p.  212. 
a  The  numeral  frame  has  been  in  use  since  1812.     It  is  said  that  it 
came  from  Russia,  and  that  Russia  herself  borrowed  it  from  China. 


386  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

daily  life.  How  many  times  do  we  need  to  solve  with  rapid- 
ity little  problems  of  domestic  economy  which  demand  but  a 
moment's  reflection  !  The  merchant  and  the  housewife  have 
not  the  time  to  resort  to  written  calculation ;  they  have  not 
always  at  hand  pen,  paper,  and  ink.  They  need  to  find  an 
immediate  solution. 

Finally,  mental  arithmetic  is  a  preparation  for  written 
arithmetic.  At  first  mental  computation  will  be  required, 
especially  of  beginners ;  but  during  the  whole  length  of  the 
course  in  arithmetic,  mental  work  will  accompany  written 
work. 

"  Mental  computation,"  says  M.  Rendu,  "  is  to  the  mind  what 
gymnastic  exercises  are  to  the  body.  ...  It  has  its  processes,  its 
methodical  and  progressive  procedure,  its  great  variety  of  exer- 
cises, its  numerous  applications.  Like  all  other  lessons,  it  de- 
mands a  thorough  preparation." 

Certain  English  teachers  are  accustomed  to  use  the  term 
economic  arithmetic  to  describe  the  arithmetic  proper  for 
the  primary  school. 

"  The  purpose  of  teaching  arithmetic  in  elementary  schools, 
apart  from  its  influence  as  a  discipline,  is  attained  when  such  a 
command  has  been  given  over  numbers  as  enables  a  young  man 
or  woman  to  calculate  with  facility  all  those  questions  which 
arise  in  the  ordinary  course  of  life.  This  may  be  called  economic 
arithmetic."  l 

412.  CHOICE  OP  PROBLEMS. — The  subject  of  the  prob- 
lems ought  to  be  borrowed  from  the  ordinary  circumstances 
of  life,  from  the  facts  of  rural  or  industrial  economy.  The 
choice  ought  to  vary  with  the  conditions  of  the  child's  life  ; 
it  will  be  one  thing  in  the  city  and  another  in  the  country. 

1  Laurie,  Primary  Instruction,  p.  107. 


THE   TEACHING  OF  THE   SCIENCES.  387 

"There  fe  an  important  principle  of  economy  in  education," 
says  Mr.  Bain,  "that  applies  to  arithmetic,  but  not  to  it  alone; 
that  is,  the  utilizing  of  the  questions  or  exercises,  by  making  them 
the  medium  of  useful  information.  Instead  of  giving  unmeaning 
numbers  to  add,  subtract,  multiply,  and  so  on,  we  might,  after  the 
more  preliminary  instances,  make  every  question  contain  some 
important  numerical  data  relating  to  the  facts  of  nature  or  the 
conventional  usages  of  life,  anticipating,  as  far  as  may  be,  the 
future  exigencies  of  the  pupils  in  their  station  in  life.  .  .  .  For 
example,  the  leading  dates  in  chronology  might  be  embodied  in  a 
variety  of  questions."  J 

413.  THE  FUNCTION  OP  MEMORY.  —  Mr.  Spencer  some- 
where says  that  the  multiplication  table  is  now  often  learned 
by  the  experimental  method.     We  confess  that  we  do  not 
quite  understand  the  thought  of  the  English  educator.     Mr. 
Bain  is  very  much  nearer  the  truth  when  he  says  : 

"  The  memory  has  to  receive  with  firmness  and  precision  all  that 
is  included  in  the  addition  and  multiplication  tables ;  and  the  test 
of  aptitude  for  the  subject  is  the  readiness  to  come  under  this 
discipline.  It  is  a  kind  of  memory  that  in  all  probability  depends 
on  a  certain  maturity  or  advancement  of  the  brain ;  so  that  no 
amount  of  concrete  illustration  will  force  it  on  before  its  time. 
....  The  multiplication  table  is  a  grand  effort  of  the  special 
memory  for  symbols  and  their  combinations,  and  the  labor  is  not 
to  be  extenuated  in  any  way.  The  associations  must  be  formed 
so  as  to  operate  automatically,  —  that  is,  without  thinking,  inquir- 
ing, or  reasoning;  and  for  this  we  must  trust  to  the  unaided 
adhesiveness  due  to  mechanical  iteration."  a 

414.  THE  METRIC  SYSTEM.  —  The  study  of  the  metric  sys- 
tem is  connected  with  that  of  arithmetic  proper.     Here  again 
it  is  important  to  show  to  children  the  objects  themselves, 
the  metre,   the  litre,  etc.      It  would  amount  to  nothing  to 


1  Bain,  op.  cU.,  p.  292. 

3  Bain,  op.  cit.t  pp.  289,  290. 


388  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

learn  by  heart  the  abstract  words  whose  meaning  has  not 
been  clearly  fixed  in  the  inind  by  the  concrete  realities. 

"  Do  you  speak  of  the  metre  ?  Cause  the  pupil  to  measure  the 
leugth  of  the  school-room,  of  the  benches,  the  board,  the  pupil's 
desk.  The  decimetres,  the  centimetres,  the  millimetres  will 
naturally  present  themselves  ;  and  if  the  children  carry  a  stick  of 
the  length  of  a  metre,  they  will  ask  to  have  the  subdivisions 
marked  upon  it." 

"Instruction  through  the  sense  of  sight,"  says  M.  Buisson, 
"  is  applied  naturally  and  without  any  difficulty  to  the  metric 
system." 

It  has  been  justly  observed  that  the  tables  of  the  metric 
system  will  not  suffice.  Each  school  should  have  in  addi- 
tion a  collection  of  real  weights  and  measures,  which  the 
child  can  see  and  handle. 

415.  RESULTS  OF  INSTRUCTION  IN  ARITHMETIC.  — Here  are 
some  of  the  faults  reported  by  the  inspectors  in  the  lessons 
in  number : 

"  A  more  frequent  use  of  mental  calculation  should  be  required. 
—  There  are  too  many  theoretical  demonstrations.  —  The  pupils 
who  have  the  best  knowledge  of  the  metric  system  are  greatly 
embarrassed  when  they  handle  the  metre  or  the  balance.  —  Most 
teachers  forget  that  primary  instruction  ought  to  be  eminently 
practical. —  The  work  is  too  abstract  and  too  mechanical.  Memory 
plays  the  principal  part,  and  the  reasoning  process  is  wanting.  — 
The  pupil  counts  tolerably  well,  but  he  is  usually  unable  to  explain 
what  he  has  done,  for  the  very  simple  reason  that  he  has  not  been 
accustomed  to  reason.  The  intuitive  method  is  mainly  followed 
with  the  youngest  children ;  but  the  moment  the  pupils  know  how 
to  apply  the  four  fundamental  processes,  all  trace  of  the  method 
disappears.  Theoretical  questions  are  put  aside,  and  books  of 
problems  replace  the  teacher's  instruction.  Mental  calculation  is 
taught  without  method,  and  when  we  interrogate  the  pupil  he 


THE  TEACHING  OF  THE   SCIENCES.  389 

seems  to  employ  the  same  processes  as  though  he  had  a  pen  or 
pencil  at  his  disposal.  The  study  of  number  is  too  often  reduced 
to  an  exercise  of  memory,  and  children  do  not  acquire  the  art  of 
reckoning  in  the  mind,  so  useful  as  a  mental  gymnastic,  and  so  in- 
dispensable to  those  who  must  do  without  pen  and  paper  for 
making  their  computations.  The  elements  of  arithmetic  are  not 
made  sensible  enough.  The  mechanism  of  the  operations  is 
learned;  but  pupils  do  not  comprehend  clearly  enough  what  they 
do  and  why  they  do  it.  Too  many  teachers  are  still  fond  of 
abstractions.  They  cannot  make  up  their  minds  to  teach  number 
by  means  of  the  numeral  frame,  pebbles,  and  sticks;  but  they 
always  begin  by  having  the  numbers  written  before  the  children 
have  an  exact  idea  of  quantity.  The  metric  system  is  taught,  but 
no  one  has  seen  a  metre." 

The  same  reports  state  some  instances  of  progress  in  the 
teaching  of  arithmetic. 

"  Arithmetic  is  of  all  the  subjects  the  one  which  gives  the  best 
results.  In  most  schools  the  computation  is  done  well  enough 
and  quickly  enough  with  the  pen  or  pencil  in  hand ;  but  pupils  are 
not  sufficiently  accustomed  to  mental  work.  Calculation  is  taught 
from  the  first  entrance  at  school,  at  first  mentally  and  orally,  then 
with  written  numbers.  Teachers  are  rarely  found  who  limit 
themselves  to  mechanical  operations  upon  abstract  numbers.  The 
problems  are  practical  and  well  chosen.  The  instruction  in 
arithmetic  is  rational ;  the  demonstration  is  always  made  at  the 
blackboard,  and  the  definitions  serve  only  to  sum  up  and  fix  the 
reasoning  processes." 

416.  GEOMETRY  IN  THE  COMMON  SCHOOL.  —  In  the  pro- 
gramme of  1882  geometry  appeared  for  the  first  time  as  a 
topic  of  obligatory  instruction  in  the  common  school.  It 
surely  cannot  be  intended  to  push  very  far  the  study  of  a  sci- 
ence which  comprises  parts  of  such  superiority  and  difficulty. 
It  is  intended  simply  to  borrow  from  it  some  notions  which 
are  the  natural  complement  and  sometimes  the  auxiliaries  of 
arithmetic. 


390  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

Moreover,  it  is  not  without  protest  that  the  innovation  has 
been  sanctioned  by  our  school  legislation.  Swiss  teachers 
formally  declare  that  "  geometry  proper  should  not  have  a 
place  in  the  programme  of  a  common  school." 

But  geometry  proper  is  not  under  discussion ;  only  the 
elements  and  applications  of  this  science. 

417.  PURPOSE  OF  INSTRUCTION  IN  GEOMETRY. — In   the 
common  school,  in  the  three  courses,  the  purpose  of  instruc- 
tion in  geometry  should  be  exclusively  practical.     The  aim 
is  to  make  the  following  items  of  knowledge  available  :  1 .  A 
comprehension  of  the  metric  system ;  2.  The  measurement 
of  surfaces  and  volumes  required  by  the  needs  of  life  ;  3.  A 
knowledge  of  the  simplest  operations  of  surveying  and  lev- 
eling. 

418.  METHOD  TO  BE  PURSUED.  —  For  geometry,  as  for 
the  other  sciences,  there  is  a  necessary  initiation,  an  intuitive 
preparation.     It  is  especially  in  the  infant  school  that  it  is 
expedient  to  communicate  the  primary  notions  of  geometry 
in  a  concrete  form.      The  official  programme  recommends, 
for  the  infant  class,  a  selection  from  Froebel's  "occupa- 
tions," shunning  technical  terms,  definitions,  and  excess  of 
detail  in  the  analysis  of  geometrical  forms. 

What  must  be  avoided  above  all  things,  at  the  beginning, 
is  the  abuse  of  technical  terms  and  abstract  definitions, 
which  the  child  repeats  like  a  parrot,  without  understanding 
them.  M.  Leyssenne  advises  that  with  little  children  we 
wholly  renounce  the  use  of  the  terms  sphere,  circle,  etc.,  and 
that  we  speak  to  them  only  of  balls  and  round  bodies. 
Without  going  to  this  extreme,  for  it  seems  to  us  necessary 
to  accustom  the  child  as  soon  as  possible  to  the  special 
vocabulary  of  each  science,  we  think  that  at  least  the  tech- 
nical term  should  be  used  only  in  the  presence  of  a  material 
object  which  may  furnish  the  mind  with  a  sensible  represeu- 


THE   TEACHING  OF   THE   SCIENCES.  391 

tation  of  it.  Do  not  begin  by  showing  to  the  child  ideal 
forms  drawn  on  the  blackboard.  Show  him  real  things, 
figures  and  solids,  whose  parts  and  properties  he  must  be 
made  to  observe. 

Says  M.  Leyssenne  :  "  We  should  take  solids  in  wood,  clay,  or 
card-board,  and  place  them  in  the  children's  hands ;  then,  when 
they  have  thoroughly  seen  them,  touched  them,  and  turned  them 
in  all  directions,  they  should  be  told  that  this  is  a  line,  this  an 
angle,  this  a  square,  this  a  circle,  etc. ;  and  finally,  they  must  draw 
that  line,  angle,  square,  and  circle,  upon  the  board.  " 

419.  ELEMENTARY  COURSE.  —  In  the  elementary  course 
hardly  more  will  be  done  than  to  continue  these  exercises 
which  are  the  alphabet  of  geometry,  and  teach  the  child  to 
unravel  that  science.  To  these  there  will  be  added  exer- 
cises in  the  measurement  and  comparison  of  magnitudes  by 
simple  judgments  of  the  eye ;  the  child  will  be  taught  to 
estimate  distances  approximately ;  and  these  will  be  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  the  metric  system.  The  difficulty  in 
making  these  estimates  will  be  seen  when  they  depend  on 
the  senses  alone. 

"A  stock  of  geometrical  conceptions  having  been  obtained," 
says  Mr.  Spencer,  "  a  further  step  may  in  course  of  time  be  taken 
by  introducing  the  practice  of  testing  the  correctness  of  all  figures 
drawn  by  the  eye.  .  .  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  geometry 
had  its  origin  in  the  methods  discovered  by  artisans  and  others,  of 
making  accurate  measurement  for  the  foundations  of  buildings, 
areas  of  inclosures,  and  the  like.  .  .  Geometrical  truths  should 
be  introduced  to  the  pupil  under  analogous  circumstances.  In  the 
cutting  out  of  pieces  for  his  card-houses,  in  the  drawing  of  orna- 
mental diagrams  for  coloring,  and  in  those  various  instructive  oc- 
cupations which  an'  inventive  teacher  will  lead  him  into,  he  may 
be  for  a  length  of  time  advantageously  left,  like  the  primitive 
builder,  to  tentative  processes ;  and  he  will  so  gain  an  abundant 


392  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

experience  of  the  difficulty  of  achieving  his  aims  by  the  unaided 
senses.1 

In  the  intermediate  and  higher  course  the  instruction  in 
geometry  ought  to  be  more  exact,  more  didactic.  Intuitive 
methods  should  give  place  to  processes  purely  abstract,  in 
which  reasoning  should  play  the  important  part. 

420.  INTUITIVE  GEOMETRY.  —  There  is  now  such  a  craze 
for  intuitive  processes  that  the  attempt  has  been  made  to 
apply  them,  not  only  to  the  elements  of  geometry,  when  they 
are  in  place,  but  to  the  whole  subject.  This  is  the  system 
known  as  tachymetry^  or  rapid  measurement,  a  sort  of  intui- 
tive geometry. 

This  system  may  be  illustrated  as  follows :  By  means  of 
contrivances  made  of  card-board  or  of  wood,  there  is  made 
an  actual  decomposition  of  the  different  volumes  which  are  to 
be  estimated  ;  then  the  parts  so  decomposed  are  grouped  in 
different  ways,  so  that  the  theorem,  which  would  otherwise 
be  demonstrated  in  abstracto  by  a  long  train  of  reasoning,  is 
made  intuitive  and  tangible.  This  method  of  physical  and 
concrete  demonstration  is  applied  even  to  the  measurement 
of  the  circle  and  the  sphere,  even  to  the  properties  of  the 
square  of  the  hypothenuse  and  of  similar  triangles.  In  a 
word,  tachymetry  is  materialized  geometry. 

"  The  aim  of  tachymetry, "  says  one  writer,  "  is  eminently  prac- 
tical, —  to  teach  the  farmer  to  compute  how  many  hectolitres  of 
wheat  there  are  in  a  pile  of  wheat  in  his  barn  ;  the  road-master  how 
many  cubic  metres,  decimetres,  and  centimetres  in  a  heap  of 
stones  ;  the  civil  engineer  how  to  proceed  in  forming  an  estimate 
of  the  work  he  is  to  perform."  2 

1  Spencer,  op.  cit.,  p.  148. 

3  This  empirical  geometry  is  all  very  well  for  such  cases  as  those 
mentioned  above ;  but  it  should  be  recollected  that  no  system  of  mere 
measurements  can  ever  provfe  that  the  sum  of  the  three  angles  of  a 
triangle  is  equal  to  two  right  angles.  (P.) 


THE   TEACHING   OF   THE   SCIENCES.  393 

421.  ARE  THERE  OBJECT-LESSONS  IK  ARITHMETIC  AND  GE- 
OMETRY?—  We  do  not  think  that  there  can  be  real  object- 
lessons  either  in  arithmetic  or  in  geometry.     We  should  note 
the  fact  that  when  we  give  the  child  sticks  in  order  to  teach 
him   to   count  or  solids  in  order  to  teach  him  to  estimate 
dimensions,  it  is  not  the  things  themselves,  the  sticks  or  the 
solids,    that  we   wish   him   to   study ;    but  we   place   these 
objects  before  his  eyes  or  in  his  hands,  in  order  that  he  may 
as  soon  as  possible  disengage,  from  these  concrete  realities 
the  abstract  idea  of  numbers,  the  abstract  idea  of  geomet- 
rical forma. 

422.  THE  PHYSICAL  AND  NATURAL  SCIENCES.  — In  intro- 
ducing the  physical  and  the  natural  sciences  into  the  common 
school,  the  purpose  has  been  both  to  give  the  child  a  certain 
amount  of  positive  knowledge,  of  an  infinite  value  for  practi- 
cal life,  and  to  teach  him  the  habit  of  observation.     While 
the  mathematical  sciences  are  especially  valuable  for  devel- 
oping inward  attention  and  power  of  reasoning,  the  natural 
and  the  physical  sciences  call  the  senses  into  play  and  teach 
the  habit  of  seeing,  and  of  seeing  completely.     Now,   as 
some  one  has  said.  "  the  spirit  of  observation  is  the  best  of 
professors."     The  child  who  is  endowed  with  it  learns  for 
himself  a  multitude  of  things  which  forever  escape  minds 
that  are  indifferent  and  incapable  of  observing. 

Every  specialist  is  disposed  to  exaggerate  the  importance 
of  the  specialty  which  he  teaches.  We  are  not  astonished, 
then,  that  Paul  Bert  attributes  to  the  physical  and  natural 
sciences  a  part  absolutely  preponderant  in  primary  instruc- 
tion. But  we  must  allow  that  no  study  is  better  adapted 
for  teaching  to  see  accurately,  to  take  nothing  on  authority, 
and  to  divest  the  mind  of  superstitious  and  prejudices. 

423.  PROGRAMMES  AND  METHODS.  —  The  French  official 
programme  purposely  insists  on  the  very  elementary  char- 


394  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

acter  of  the  instruction  given  in  the  physical  and  natural 
sciences  in  the  common  school. 

It  recommends  object-lessons  for  the  first  course,  —  les- 
sons, moreover,  graduated  according  to  a  regular  plan, 
bearing  on  man,  animals,  vegetables,  minerals.  These 
objects  will  be  shown  to  children,  and  the  teacher  will  add 
to  these  some  simple  and  familiar  explanations. 

Physics  appears  only  with  the  intermediate  courses,  and 
provides  for  only  summary  notions  on  the  three  states  of 
matter,  upon  air,  water,  and  combustion.  Simple  experi- 
mental demonstration  will  complete  the  lesson.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  intermediate  course,  didactic  lessons  will 
be  given  on  man,  animals,  and  vegetables.  It  is  evident 
that  this  course  ought  to  be  as  descriptive  as  possible. 

Chemistry  is  introduced  in  the  higher  course  under  this 
description :  The  notion  of  simple  bodies,  compound  bodies, 
metals,  and  common  salts. 

Physics  is  studied  in  its  essential  laws, — weight,  heat, 
light,  electricity,  etc.  Instruments  are  described  and  ex- 
plained. 

Finally,  in  this  same  course,  mineralogy  is  in  turn  added 
to  the  two  other  natural  sciences,  botany  and  zoology,  the 
study  of  which  is  continued.  At  the  same  time  that  human 
physiology  is  taught,  the  principal  functions  of  the  human 
body  are  explained. 

424.  NECESSITY  OF  A  BOOK.  — The  physical  and  natural 
sciences  cannot  be  taught  without  apparatus,  instruments, 
and  museums. 

Now  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  for  the  most  part  the 
common  schools  are  destitute  of  scientific  instruments  and 
natural  history  collections.  The  book  is  then  indispensable, 
a  book  that  is  well  written,  which  requires  but  inexpensive 
experiments,  —  an  elementary  book,  and  not  merely  an 
abridgment. 


THE   TEACHING   OF  THE   SCIENCES.  395 

"  To  select  in  each  science, "  says  Paul  Bert,  "  the  dominant, 
fundamental  facts ;  to  set  them  forth  with  sufficient  details  to 
make  them  clearly  apparent  to  the  child's  mind  and  to  fix  them 
firmly  in  his  memory ;  to  neglect  facts  of  secondary  importance ; 
—  such  are  the  general  rules  that  should  be  followed. " 

425.  PRACTICAL  CHARACTER  OF  THIS  INSTRUCTION. — In 
the  teaching  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences,  particular 
care  should  be  taken  to  avoid  all  fine-spun  theories,  and 
everything  which  cannot  be  made  really  intelligible  to  the 
child.  Special  attention  will  also  be  given  to  the  practical 
application  which  may  be  made  of  the  different  parts  of 
these  sciences.  The  official  programme  enjoins  this  course 
upon  teachers  when  it  requires  them  to  dwell  upon  "the 
transformation  of  crude  material  into  the  manufactured 
articles  of  every-day  use,"  and  again  when  it  offers  prac- 
tical suggestions  on  hygiene  and  upon  the  effects  of  tobacco 
and  alcohol. 

Doubtless  the  first  result  of  scientific  instruction  is  mental 
development.  These  studies  open  the  intelligence,  extend 
the  intellectual  horizon,  and  train  men. 

"  A  training  in  the  natural  sciences  must  be  raised  to  the  dignity 
of  a  regular  educational  appliance ;  and  for  this  purpose  the  quan- 
tity must  be  reduced;  but  what  is  learned  must  be  perfectly  assim- 
ilated, and  must  be  used,  not  to  increase  the  volume  of  what  is 
known,  but  to  establish  habits  of  attentive  observation,  of  exact 
analysis,  and  of  a  fruitful  and  well-regulated  curiosity. " 

But  the  material  results  of  this  instruction  are  no  less 
valuable.  The  sciences  of  nature  appear  to  us  particularly 
useful  and  commendable,  because  they  are  a  necessary  intro- 
duction to  professional  instruction,  and  are  a  preparation 
for  the  arts  and  the  trades. 

426.    SCIENTIFIC  EXCURSIONS.  —  Nothing  is  more  helpful 


396  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

to  the  teaching  of  the  physical  and  natural  sciences  than 
scientific  excursions,  whether  they  be  directed  to  the  fields, 
woods,  and  farms,  or  to  some  shop  or  manufactory.  But  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  these  excursions  ought  to  preserve 
their  character  of  recreation  and  diversion.  The  instruction 
that  is  given  in  them  should  take  place  in  the  presence  of 
pupils  in  the  form  of  familiar  conversations,  and  the  in- 
structor should  not  carry  outside  of  the  class-room  the 
habits  and  the  didactic  method  of  the  school. 


.      CHAPTER  VTII. 

MOKALS    AND    CIVIC    INSTRUCTION. 

427.  MORAL  EDUCATION  AND  THE  TEACHING  OF  MORALS. 
—  In  1881  some  of  the  inspectors-general  complained  that 
"  at  present  moral  education  is  not   included   in  the  pro- 
gramme of  common-school  instruction."     It  will  never  be 
included  in  it ;  for  though  it  is  the  principal  and  the  essen- 
tial purpose  of  instruction,  it  is  not  a  part  of  the  programme. 
Moral  education  is  a  general  and  delicate  subject  which  can- 
not be  imprisoned  within  the  limits  of  a  regular  course  of 
technical   instruction.      It   is  otherwise  with   morals  itself, 
which  ought  to  be  separately  taught  as  a  science,  and  the 
highest  of  all  the  sciences.     Doubtless  a  course  in  morals, 
however  well  it  may  be  taught,  will  not  suffice  to  make  a 
good  man  ;  but  it  will  aid  in  doing  this,  and  it  is  with  reason 
that  the  legislation  of  1882,  in  imitation  of  what  was  done 
abroad,  gave  to  morals  a  place  in  the  programme  of  the 
common  schools. 

428.  MORALS  MAY  BE  TAUGHT  IN  EVERY  SCHOOL  EXER- 
CISE. —  Instead  of  being  the  definite  object   of   a    regular 
course,  taught  at  certain  hours,  the  teaching  of  morals  ought 
to  be  the  constant  care  of  the  teacher  and  the  natural  result 
of  all  the  exercises  of  the  school. 

Says  M.  Janet :  "  There  is  a  capital  mode  of  moral  instruction 
which  pervades  the  whole  course  of  teaching,  all  the  studies  of  the 
child,  and  even  all  the  acts  of  his  life.  We  may  teach  morals 
through  reading,  writing,  grammar,  history,  and  even  through  the 

397 


398  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

sciences.  Children  will  be  taught  to  read  in  good  books  contain- 
ing short  moral  lessons;  they  will  be  made  to  write,  as  models, 
maxims  and  sentences  which  will  remain  in  their  memory ; 
dictation  exercises  may  be  given  them  borrowed  from  the  records 
of  the  moralists ;  and  history  at  each  step  is  a  school  of  morals. 
Even  arithmetic  may  be  used  for  this  purpose  ;  for  from  the  rule 
of  interest,  for  example,  this  practical  inference  may  be  drawn, 
that  no  debts  should  be  contracted,  or  if  they  are  they  must  be 
paid.  There  is  a  lesson  in  morals  in  the  acts  of  the  child  at  all 
hours  of  the  day,  even  in  his  sports  and  recreations.  At  each 
moment  the  instructor  is  obliged  to  teach  neatness,  politeness, 
obedience,  industry,  and  the  spirit  of  peace  and  concord.  From 
this  first  point  of  view  the  school  as  a  whole  is  in  itself  a  school  of 
moral  instruction." 

429.  THE  SPECIAL  TEACHING  OF  MORALS. — But  outside 
of  this  diffused  and  almost  unconscious  teaching  of  morals, 
which  results  from  all  the  exercises  of  the  school,  there 
ought  to  be  a  regular  course  of  instruction  in  morals,  very 
simple,  of  course,  and  very  modest,  but  distinct  from  all 
the  others.  Morals  is  a  science  which  may  and  should  be 
taught  on  its  own  account,  in  the  common  school  as  every- 
where else.  It  is  only  by  this  means  that  there  will  be  a 
cure  for  what  is  irregular,  indefinite,  and  insufficient  in 
moral  education,  when  it  is  supported  merely  on  indirect 
lessons  and  a  disconnected  instruction. 

On  this  question  there  may  be  differences  of  opinion 
among  men  of  good  judgment.  M.  Buisson,  in  his  Rapport 
sur  Vexposition  de  Philadelphie,  declared  that  morals  differs 
from  the  other  topics  of  the  programme  in  the  fact  that  it 
cannot  have  a  fixed  time  in  the  scheme  of  daily  exercises. 
The  official  programmes  of  1881  have,  as  it  seems  to  us, 
rightly  come  to  a  different  conclusion,  for  they  say  ex- 
pressly : 

"  There  shall  be  each  day,  in  the  two  lower  grades,  at  least  one 
lesson  which,  in  the  form  of  a  familar  conversation  or  by  means  of 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  399 

appropriate  reading  lessons,  shall  be  devoted  to  moral  instruction  ; 
in  the  higher  grade  this  lesson  shall  be,  as  far  as  possible,  the 
methodical  development  of  a  systematic  course  in  morals." 

430.  TOPICS   OF  MORAL    INSTRUCTION.  —  The  object   of 
instruction  in  morals  in  the  common  school  is  the  practical 
knowledge  of  duties  much  more  than  the  theoretical  expres- 
sion of  moral  principles.     It  is  of  less  importance  to  have 
the   child   reason   as   a   philosopher   on  the   nature   of   his 
actions,  than  to  prepare  him  to  fulfil  as  an  upright  man  all 
the  obligations  of  life. 

"  It  should  be  the  duty  of  all  teachers,"  says  M.  Janet,  "  to  in- 
struct their  pupils  during  the  whole  school  course  in  their  duties 
towards  their  family,  their  country,  their  fellows,  themselves,  and 
God." 

Learned  discussions  on  good  and  evil,  on  the  character  of 
the  moral  law,  on  the  principle  of  moral  obligation,  ought  to 
be  nearly  proscribed  in  elementary  instruction  in  morals. 
These  things  are  proper  in  a  college  course,  but  it  would  be 
useless  to  require  them  of  children  in  the  common  school, 
whose  minds  are  insufficiently  prepared  for  such  studies. 

431.  SCOPE    AND    LIMITS    OF   THIS    INSTRUCTION. — The 
teaching  of  morals  in  the  common  school  ought  not  to  be 
connected  with  any  religious  doctrine.     Universal  and  com- 
mon to  all  children,  to  whatever  confession  they  may  belong, 
it  speaks  but  the  language  of  reason  and  common  sense  ;  it 
remains   human,   and   does   not   encroach   on   the   peculiar 
beliefs  of  any  religious  body. 

"  Lay  instruction  in  morals  is  distinguished  from  religious  in- 
struction without  contradicting  it.  The  instructor  substitutes 
himself  neither  for  the  priest  nor  for  the  head  of  the  family;  he 
unites  his  efforts  with  theirs  in  order  to  make  of  each  child  an 
honest  man.  He  ought  to  insist  on  the  duties  which  bring  men 


400  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

together,  and  not  on  the  dogmas  which  divide  them.  Every  theo- 
logical and  philosophical  discussion  is  manifestly  forbidden  him 
by  the  very  character  of  his  functions,  by  the  age  of  his  pupils, 
and  by  the  confidence  of  families  and  of  the  state ;  he  concen- 
trates all  his  energies  on  a  problem  of  another  nature,  but  not 
less  arduous,  for  the  very  reason  that  it  is  exclusively  practical  ; 
and  this  is  to  make  all  children  serve  an  actual  apprenticeship  in 
right-living. 

"  Later,  when  they  have  become  citizens,  they  will  perhaps  be 
separated  by  dogmatic  opinions,  but  at  least  they  will  be  in  prac- 
tical accord  in  placing  the  aim  of  life  as  high  as  possible ;  in 
having  the  same  horror  of  whatever  is  low  and  vile,  the  same 
admiration  for  whatever  is  noble  and  generous,  the  same  delicacy 
in  the  appreciation  of  duties ;  in  aspiring  after  moral  perfection, 
whatever  efforts  it  may  cost ;  and  in  feeling  themselves  united  in 
the  general  homage  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  which 
is  also  a  form,  and  none  the  less  pure,  of  the  religious  feeling."  * 

432.  DIVISION  OF  THE  COURSES.  —  In  the  teaching  of 
morals,  more  perhaps  than  in  any  other  subject,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  follow  a  progressive  plan,  to  proceed  at  first  by  ex- 
amples, by  familiar  talks,  to  rise  little  by  little  to  abstract 
laws  and  to  general  rules. 

It  is  in  accordance  with  these  principles  that  the  official 
programme  has  organized  the  different  courses  in  the  com- 
mon school. 

In  the  infant  class  the  instruction  comprises  only  simple 
talks  mingled  with  the  various  exercises  of  the  school,  short 
poems  learned  by  heart,  and  stories  told  by  the  teachers. 

In  the  three  grades  of  the  common  school,  the  programme 
regulates  the  succession  of  topics  as  follows : 

ELEMENTARY  COURSE. —  Familiar  conversations;  readings  with 
explanations,  narratives,  examples,  precepts ;  learning  by  heart. 
INTERMEDIATE  COURSE. —  Readings  with  explanations  as  before 

1  Programme  of  1882,  Education  morale. 


MORALS  AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  401 

(narratives,  examples,  precepts),  but  co-ordinated  and  graduated 
according  to  a  methodical  plan. 

HIGHER  COURSE. —  Short  graduated  lessons  in  moral  instruc- 
tion, illustrated  by  examples  in  accordance  with  the  programme. 

It  is  then  only  in  the  higher  course  that  the  instruction 
will  assume  a  didactic,  doctrinal  form,  and  that  the  teacher 
will  give  formal  lessons. 

433.  THE    INDUCTIVE    AND     DEDUCTIVE    METHOD. — In 
whatever  way  we  may  teach  morals,  the  method  followed  is 
always  either  inductive  or  deductive. 

We  may  start  from  an  example,  from  a  fact  furnished  by 
history,  from  a  fiction  invented  by  the  teacher's  imagination, 
from  an  experience  of  the  child,  from  an  incident  which  has 
occurred  in  the  class^  in  the  school,  or  in  the  village,  and 
then  lead  the  pupil  to  discover  the  moral  truth  concealed 
behind  this  particular  event.  This  is  to  proceed  induc- 
tively. 

Or  we  may  lay  down  a  moral  rule,  the  definition  of  a  virtue 
or  a  precept  of  conduct,  and  after  having  explained  it 
in  itself,  we  may  help  the  pupil  to  find  practical  applications 
of  this  general  rule.  In  other  terms,  we  may  proceed  de- 
ductively. 

"  At  one  time,"  says  M.  Janet,  "  maxims  will  be  regarded  as  the 
consequence  of  a  story  or  a  fable  ;  and  at  another  tbey  will  be  pre- 
sented as  principles,  and  the  story  or  the  fable  will  become  the 
proof  or  the  application  of  the  maxim." 

434.  PROPER  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  INSTRUCTION  IN  MORALS. 
—  The  clearness,  logic,  and  intellectual  qualities  which  may 
assure  the  efficiency  of  every  other  topic,  will  not  suffice  in 
the  teaching  of  morals.     In  this  case  the  teacher  is  an  edu- 
cator rather  than  a  professor.     He  floos  not  address  himself 
alone  to  the  mind,  — he  must  touch  the  heart,  penetrate  the 


402  PRACTICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

conscience,  and  insinuate  himself  into  the  depths  of  the  soul. 
He  has  need  of  gravity,  and  also  of  fervor  and  communi- 
cative emotion ;  he  himself  ought  to  feel  vividly  the  moral 
truths  which  he  communicates  to  others. 

"  In  order  that  moral  culture  may  be  possible  and  effective,  it  is 
an  indispensable  condition  that  this  instruction  touch  the  soul 
to  the  quick  ;  that  it  shall  be  conf9unded  with  an  ordinary  lesson 
neither  in  tone,  character,  nor  form.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  give 
the  pupil  correct  notions  and  store  his  memory  with  wise  maxims ; 
but  we  must  succeed  in  developing  within  him  emotions  so  true 
and  so  strong  as  to  aid  him  in  the  day  of  trial  in  triumphing  over 
passions  and  vices.  It  is  required  of  the  teacher,  not  to  adorn  the 
memory  of  the  child,  but  to  touch  his  heart  and  to  make  him  feel, 
by  a  direct  experience,  the  majesty  of  the  moral  law.  This  is 
equivalent  to  saying  that  the  means  to  be  employed  cannot  be  like 
those  which  are  proper  in  a  lesson  in  science  or  grammar.  They 
ought  to  be  not  only  more  versatile  and  varied,  but  more  intimate, 
more  affecting,  more  practical,  of  a  character  less  didactic  on  the 
whole,  but  more  serious." 

435.  TEACHING  THROUGH  THE  HEART.  —  We  have  been 
sharply  criticised  for  having  said,  in  our  Elements  d 'instruc- 
tion civique  et  morale,  that  "  the  practice  of  morals  is  based 
on  the  sensibilities."  But  yet  this  is  the  simple  truth.  Feel- 
ing, whether  it  be  the  feeling  of  affection  for  one's  family, 
one's  companion,  one's  fellow-citizen,  or  even  religious  sen- 
timent, that  noble  emotion  of  the  soul  for  the  good,  —  these 
are  the  most  fruitful  sources  of  virtue.  On  this  point  edu- 
cators are  unanimous. 

"  With  the  child,"  says  M.  Marion,  "  the  heart  anticipates  the 
head,  and  it  is  rather  through  the  heart  than  through  the  reason 
that  we  have  our  hold  on  him.  It  is  then  to  the  heart  that  we 
must  first  address  ourselves.  The  sensibilities  of  the  child  are 
already  very  active  at  a  time  when  his  intelligence  is  yet  scarcely 
awakened.  It  would  then  be  a  waste  of  time  to  teach  him  general 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  403 

precepts,  but  to  the  same  degree  it  would  be  a  useful  undertaking 
to  devote  our  energies  to  touching  his  heart,  to  giving  him  a  love 
and,  so  to  speak,  an  agitation  for  the  good,  a  longing  for  what 
is  better." 

"  From  the  hearthstone  of  the  tender  and  generous  emotions," 
says  Madame  de  Saussure,  "  there  radiates  over  the  intelligence  a 
kind  of  animation,  that  gentle  ardor  with  which  it  is  intimately 
penetrated.  .  .  .  The  feelings  are  not  only  necessary  to  the  mind 
as  a  complement  to  its  knowledge,  but  they  decide  its  very  char- 
acter, its  nature,  and  the  mode  of  its  action."  * 

436.  EDUCATION    THROUGH   REFLECTION.  —  Convinced  as 
we  are  of  the  prerogatives  of  the  heart  and  the  emotions  in 
the  matter  of  moral  culture,  we  have  not  the  least  thought 
of  depreciating  the  influence  of   the  intelligence   itself   in 
moral  education.     Virtue  is  an  affair  of  judgment  as  well  as 
of  feeling.     We  must  first  know  where  duty  lies.     To  know 
accurately  in  what  it  consists,  what  reasons  constrain  us  to 
follow  it,  what  consequences  will  result  from  it,  is  not  with- 
out use  in  deciding  us  to  fulfil  it. 

The  teacher  will  then  appeal  to  the  child's  judgment  and 
reflection.  "In  the  intermediate  course,"  says  M.Janet, 
"  we  ought  to  address  ourselves  to  the  reflection,  if  not 
more,  at  least  as  much,  as  to  the  feelings." 

"  The  instructor,"  says  M.  Marion,  "  ought  to  give  the  child 
general  modes  of  thinking,  general  rules  for  forming  sound  judg- 
ments, and  a  larger  sense  of  his  own  responsibility.  If  we  would 
have  the  child  accustom  himself  to  do  nothing  without  asking 
himself  what  is  good  or  bad  in  the  given  case,  we  must  evidently 
furnish  him  with  general  precepts  as  to  good  and  evil,  and  give 
him  true  moral  instruction."2 

437.  EDUCATION  THROUGH    PRACTICE.  —  "When  we    have 
assigned  the  mind  and  the  heart  their  respective  parts  in  the 


1  L'Education  progressive,  I ,  p.  277. 

2  Marion,  op.  cit.,  p.  392. 


404  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

teaching  of  morals,  we  must  hasten  to  recognize  the  function 
of  habit  and  will.  It  is  of  pre-eminent  importance  that  by 
his  vigilant  endeavor  the  teacher  assure  to  every  moment  of 
school  life  the  accomplishment  of  acts  in  conformity  with 
the  moral  law.  The  intelligent  application  of  school  disci- 
pline will  furnish  him  the  means  for  doing  this.  He  will 
allow  liberty  of  thought  and  action,  but  will  indicate  to  his 
pupils  their  errors  or  their  mistakes.  He  will  teach  them  a 
horror  for  tale-bearing,  dissimulation,  and  hypocrisy.  He 
will  place  above  everything  else  frankness  and  uprightness, 
and  for  this  purpose  he  will  never  discourage  the  frank 
speech  of  children,  their  objections  or  their  questions. 

"  The  teacher  ought  to  give  the  child  habits.  ...  At  the  age 
of  seven  the  child  has  not  yet  all  the  good  habits  which  he  ought 
to  have,  and  even  those  which  he.  has  are  not  as  strong  as  they 
ought  to  become.  We  must  continue  to  train  him  to  what  is  good 
by  inspiring  him  without  his  knowledge,  so  to  speak,  with  correct 
modes  of  acting  and  feeling.  General  precepts  would  be  useless 
at  that  age ;  they  are  repulsive  and  dry  because  they  are  abstract 
and  remain  without  effect.  Let  us  recall  the  remark  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  "  that  it  is  not  only  with  children,  but  with  all  inatten- 
tive and  slightly  cultured  minds,  that  admonitions  fail  of  their 
purpose." 

"  We  do  not  teach  a  child  morals  in  order  that  he  may  know, 
but  in  order  that  he  may  do.  In  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term, 
it  is  not  a  question  of  teaching  but  of  inculcating,  which  is  an  en- 
tirely different  thing.  In  introducing  morals  into  the  programme 
of  the  common  schools,  it  was  not  intended  to  introduce  a  new 
branch  of  instruction  analogous  to  the  others,  new  lessons  parallel 
with  the  other  lessons ;  but  it  is  the  education  of  the  heart  and  of 
the  character  that  it  is  proposed  to  assure  and  direct  in  the  best 
manner  possible." 

438.  PRACTICAL  EXERCISES. — This  necessity  of  appealing 
to  the  moral  habits  is  so  evident  that  the  authors  of  the 
official  programme  have  taken  special  pains  to  recommend 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  •      405 

practical  exercises  which  tend  to  embody  moral  principles  in 
action,  both  within  the  school  and  outside  the  school.  An 
attentive  supervision  is  thus  imposed  on  teachers.1 

These  practical  exercises  ought  first  to  take  account  of 
individual  characteristics.  The  teacher  ought  to  know  the 
peculiar  disposition  of  each  pupil  for  the  purpose  of  inter- 
vening to  correct  their  faults  and  to  call  into  play  their  good 
qualities.  To  a  far  higher  degree  than  intellectual  educa- 
tion, moral  education  requires  the  particular,  personal  care 
which  aims  at  each  natural  bent  of  the  child. 

The  teacher  must  also  endeavor  to  correct  the  bad  habits, 
the  prejudices,  and  the  superstitions  which  the  child  brings 
from  the  family  into  the  school,  upon  which  he  has  been 
nourished  from  infancy,  and  which  the  influences  of  the 
environment  in  which  he  lives  continue  to  perpetuate  in  him. 

"  The  child  does  not  reach  the  age  of  seven  absolutely  inexperi- 
enced and  morally  unaffected.  A  sort  of  moral  perversion  has 
already  begun  in  him  through  default  of  proper  care,  and  the 
teacher  who  receives  him  into  school  ought  not  only  to  do  what 
has  not  been  done,  but  more  often  to  undo  what  alone  has  been 
done." 

439.  THE  EXAMPLE  OF  A  TEACHER.  —  But  it  is  not  alone 
the  child  with  his  habits  already  formed,  with  his  prejudices 
contracted  from  birth,  that  must  be  supervised  in  his  acts 
and  trained  to  think  better  and  to  do  better ;  but,  above  all, 
the  teacher  ought  to  supervise  himself. 

"In  order  that  the  pupil  may  be  penetrated  with  that  respect 
for  the  moral  law  which  is  a  complete  education  in  itself,  the  first 

1  "In  some  schools  the  children  are  polite  and  respectful  to  every- 
body, and  they  are  early  inspired  with  the  sentiment  of  duty  ;  but  this 
is  far  from  being  true  in  most  schools.  Teachers  do  not  supervise 
their  pupils  enough  outside  of  school ;  they  do  not  apply  themselves 
sufficiently  to  training  the  hearts  of  children,  and  too  often  forget  that 
instruction  is  nothing  without  educatio7." 


406  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

thing  necessary  is  that  by  his  character,  his  conduct,  and  his 
language,  the  teacher  himself  should  be  the  most  persuasive  of 
examples.  In  this  order  of  instruction,  what  does  not  come  from 
the  heart  does  not  go  to  the  heart.  The  teacher  who  recites 
precepts  and  speaks  of  duty  without  conviction  and  emotion,  does 
much  worse  than  lose  his  effort ;  he  is  guilty  of  a  fault." 

It  is  not  only  when  he  speaks  of  morals,  it  is  always  and 
everywhere  that  the  teacher  ought  to  present  himself  to  the 
child  as  a  living  example  of  uprightness  and  honesty.  A 
real  model  acting  before  the  eyes  of  the  child  will  always 
be  more  efficient  than  the  models  borrowed  from  history 
or  fiction. 

440.  INCIDENTAL  MARKS.  —  It  is  doubtless  necessary  in 
the  teaching  of  morals  not  so  much  to  preach  as  to  do ;  but 
yet  exhortations  made  with  gravity  are  not  without  their 
value. 

M.  Pecaut  wisely  recommends  the  managers  of  schools  to 
call  together,  at  least  each  week,  the  pupils  of  the  lower 
classes  for  the  purpose  of  conversing  with  them  for  half  an 
hour. 

"Let  them  then  enter  into  more  direct  communication  with 
them ;  let  them  pass  in  review  the  history  of  the  past  week,  doing 
justice  to  all ;  and  let  them  point  out,  along  with  the  faults  and 
shortcomings,  the  honest  efforts  and  good  results.  Let  them  re- 
serve for  this  conference  some  interesting  article,  adapted  to  raise 
the  children  above  the  ordinary  level  of  their  studies,  and  to  inspire 
them  with  a  taste  to  read  for  themselves  some  good  books  from 
the  school  library.  For  this  purpose  let  them  give  their  pupils 
discreet  advice  as  to  their  ordinary  life,  their  family  duties,  and 
books  that  are  to  be  avoided.  Such  conversations  well  prepared, 
serious  without  stiffness,  in  which  a  skillful  manager  would  never 
fail  to  associate  his  subordinates,  might  be  made  the  principal 
educative  lesson,  a  cordial,  interesting,  arid  undogmatic  moral 
lesson.  The  child  would  leave  the  school  better  prepared  to  profit 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  407 

by  the  good  influences  of  the  family,  and  better  armed  against  the 
bad  examples  and  the  unwholesome  excitements  of   the  street." 

441.  READING. — It  is  particularly  by  reading  that  good 
moral  inspirations  are  to  be  insinuated  into  the  head  and 
into  the  heart  of  the  child.     This  reading  is  either  done  in 
class,  with  commentaries  which  throw  into  relief  the  impor- 
tant parts  of  the  text,  or  is  done  personally  by  the  pupil. 

"School  libraries,"  say  the  Rapports  of  the  inspectors-general, 
"  when  they  are  well  maintained,  will  furnish  the  teacher  powerful 
aids  in  education  and  moral  instruction.  The  influence  of  good 
books  is  very  important,  and  so  their  influence  should  be  extended 
everywhere  in  order  to  develop,  by  this  means,  a  high  state  of 
moral  sentiment." 

442.  POETRY.  —  We  have  noted  in  another  place  the  rela- 
tions between  the  beautiful  and  the  good,  between  art  and 
morals.     In  our  schools  we  have  not  yet  learned  to  draw 
from  literary  studies  all  the  advantage  which  education  is 
entitled  to  expect  from  them. 

"  If  the  moral  and  religious  sense  consists  above  all  in  respect- 
ful homage  and  submission  rendered  to  what  is  better  than  one's 
self,  to  the  ideal,  to  the  good,  and  finally  to  the  perfect  Being, 
what  is  more  proper  for  awakening  it  than  to  make  an  appeal  to 
the  sense  of  admiration  for  what  is  beautiful,  —  beautiful  in 
thought,  sentiment,  form,  and  order ;  for  everything  which,  by 
surpassing  our  low  level,  solicits  us  to  step  out  of  ourselves  and  to 
mount  higher  ?  Let  us  recognize  a  great  want  here,  which  I  will 
only  indicate.  The  official,  dogmatic  religion  has  retired  from 
our  schools,  and  nothing  has  yet  come  to  take  its  place;  moral 
instruction  has  no  more  than  appeared  on  the  threshold ;  and  art 
in  its  various  forms,  but  particularly  in  the  eminently  educative 
form  of  poetry,  does  not  fulfill  in  any  degree  its  office  of  high 
culture.  Even  choral  singing,  which  has  always  been  the  chosen 
instrument  of  religious,  moral,  and  patriotic  education,  nowhere 
exists,  so  to  speak,  in  our  schools." 


408  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

443.  THEORETICAL   MORALS.  —  While    the    teaching   of 
morals   in  the  common  school  has  mainly  a  practical  aim, 
the  instructor  need  not  neglect  to  give  to  his  lessons  an  ele- 
vated general  character.     It  does  not  suffice  to  teach  pupils 
their  individual  duties,  and  put  them  in  a  condition  to  prac- 
tice them ;  but  it  is  necessary  that  the  course  in  morals  be 
also  an  occasion  to  awaken  the  reflection  of  the  child  on  the 
nature  of  man  and  on  his  destination  in  the  world. 

"  The  last  course,"  says  M.  Janet,  "  will  not  be  finished  without 
having  given  the  children  some  notions  of  what  we  call  theoretical 
morals,  —  that  is,  the  explanation  of  the  principles  of  morals,  the 
distinction  between  good  and  evil,  duty  as  distinct  from  personal 
interest,  conscience  and  the  moral  sense,  merit  and  demerit,  moral 
sanction  and  the  future  life  founded  on  the  justice  of  God." 

In  other  terms,  the  teacher  has  not  only  to  favor  the  par- 
ticular dispositions  which  will  prepare  the  child  for  the 
accomplishment  of  such  or  such  a  duty  ;  but  he  ought  to  aim 
higher  and  by  all  possible  means,  by  the  strict  application  of 
rules,  by  the  judicious  use  of  rewards  and  punishments,  by 
exhortations  and  reprimands,  and  on  occasion  by  theoretical 
explanations,  he  will  do  his  best  to  develop  in  the  soul  of  his 
pupil  that  which  is  the  basis  of  all  morals,  the  feeling  of 
personal  responsibility. 

* 

444.  Civic  INSTRUCTION. — Recently  introduced  into  the 
programmes  of  primary  instruction,  civic  instruction  might 
in  a  sense  be  confounded  with  morals,  of  which  it  is  but  the 
complement.     It  is  impossible,  in  fact,  to  become  a  citizen 
if  one  does  not  begin  by  being  a  man.     The  firmest  basis  of 
the  civic  virtues  will  always  be  the  practice  of  the  individual 
and  social  virtues. 

It  is  with  reason,  however,  that  a  special  place  has  been 
given  to  civic  instruction,  were  it  only  to  bring  into  clearer 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  409 

view  its  importance  and  utility.  But  it  is  not  proposed  to 
give  merely  indirect  instruction  in  civics,  such  as  might 
result  from  history,  geography,  etc. ;  but  there  is  oppor- 
tunity to  give  direct  instruction  in  all  the  topics  included 
in  this  expression  by  connecting  them  with  the  courses  in 
history  and  geography. 

445.  NECESSITY  OF  Civic  INSTRUCTION.  —  It  is  not  enough 
to  say  that  instruction  in  civics  is  useful ;  the  truth  is  that  it 
is  necessary.  It  is  especially  so  since  political  liberty,  that 
conquest  of  the  Republic  of  1848,  has  been  added  to  civil 
liberty,  that  conquest  of  the  Revolution. 

In  a  country  which  governs  itself,  where  each  individual 
through  his  vote  participates  freely  in  the  direction  of  public 
affairs,  why  permit  the  majority  of  citizens,  those  who 
attend  only  the  common  school,  to  remain  in  ignorance  of 
their  political  and  social  obligations  ? 

You  require  them  to  respect  and  love  the  Constitution,  and 
they  do  not  know  the  Constitution  ! 

You  require  them  to  exercise  their  rights  and  perform 
their  duties,  and  they  are  ignorant  of  the  meaning  and  the 
scope  of  these  rights  and  duties  ! 

Citizens  who  boast  of  this  glorious  name  without  knowing 
what  obligation  it  imposes  on  them  ;  electors  who  vote  with- 
out knowing  the  importance  of  their  vote ;  tax-payers  who 
pay  taxes  without  comprehending  the  use  made  of  them ; 
inhabitants  of  a  country  who  have  not  been  taught  to  love 
her ;  —  such  are  necessarily  the  members  of.  a  people  who 
have  lacked  instruction  in  civics. 

Doubtless  the  newspapers  repair  this  ignorance  in  part, 
but  there  is  no  regularity  and  system  in  the  teaching  of  the 
press ;  it  is  subject  to  a  thousand  hazards.  Moreover,  all 
the  newspapers  are  not  what  they  should  be  ;  and,  finally,  the 
newspaper  often  comes  too  late  to  heal  the  political  preju- 


410  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

dices  which  have  been  left  to  take  root  in  the  soul  of  the 
child  and  the  young  man. 

A  distinguished  writer,  Vitet,  said  a  few  years  ago,  "Love 
of  country  is  not  taught  in  France."  If  this  assertion  is 
true,  it  is  important  that  it  cease  to  be  so,  and  that  the  chil- 
dren of  France  learn  to  love  not  only  their  country,  but  also 
the  institutions  of  their  country. 

"  Without  civic  and  political  education,"  wrote  Pestalozzi,  "  the 
sovereign  people  is  a  child  playing  with  fire  at  the  risk  each 
moment  of  burning  down  the  house." 

In  1877  M.  Greard  demanded  the  introduction  into  French 
schools  of  what  abroad  has  long  been  called  civic  instruc- 
tion. 

"  What  good  sense  demands,"  he  said,  "  is  that  to  the  respect 
for  the  national  traditions  which  is  the  basis  of  enlightened  patri- 
otism, there  be  joined  in  the  minds  of  children  who  have  reached 
the  age  of  reason,  a  knowledge  of  the  general  laws  in  common  use 
in  their  country.  What  our  pupils  know  the  least,  is  that  which 
for  themselves  and  for  everybody  they  should  have  the  most  in- 
terest in  knowing.  It  is  surely  not  without  use  for  them  to  have 
an  idea  of  the  capitularies  of  Charlemagne ;  but  how  much  more 
important  it  is  that  they  shall  not  be  left  in  ignorance  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  social  organization  in  the  midst  of  which  they  are 
called  to  fulfill  their  duties  as  citizens!  Doubtless  the  child 
should  not  be  an  absolute  stranger  to  the  regime  of  our  ancient 
provinces ;  but  is  it  not  still  more  indispensable  that  he  have  an 
exact  notion  of  all  that  actually  constitutes  the  organic  life  of  a 
commune,  of  a  department,  of  the  state  ?  How  many  pupils  there 
are  who  might  explain  in  a  fashion  what  in  their  day  the  Mayors 
of  the  Palace  were,  who  would  be  greatly  embarrassed  to  define 
the  function  and  the  prerogatives  of  the  mayor  of  their  arrondisse- 
ment  or  of  their  village!  And  if  these  notions  are  not  taught 
them  at  school,  as  they  might  be,  and  as  they  are  in  all  the  coun- 
tries about  us,  where  and  how  shall  they  be  learned  ?  "  1 

1  M.  Greard,  L'Eiiseignement  primaire  a  Paris  de  1867  a  1877,  p.  281. 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  411 

446.  METHOD  TO  BE  PURSUED.  —  There  is  nothing  drier 
or  more  monotonous  than  a  course  of  instruction  in  civics, 
if  the  teacher  does  nothing  more  than   enumerate   to   the 
child  the  administrative  and  political  notions  of  which  it  is 
composed.     But  it  is  easy,  if  one  takes  the  trouble,  to  ani- 
mate  and   vivify   this   instruction  by   citing  examples,  by 
availing  one's  self  of  history,  and  above  all  by  aiming  to 
excite  without  cessation  national  ideas  and  to  enkindle  the 
flame  of  patriotism. 

The  purpose  of  civic  instruction,  in  fact,  is  not  only  to 
introduce  into  the  mind  of  the  child  a  certain  amount  of 
positive  knowledge ;  but  it  is,  above  all,  to  cultivate  in  his 
soul  at  an  early  hour  his  natural  inclination  to  love  his 
country  and  to  respect  her  laws. 

The  official  programme  indicates  the  course  to  be  pur- 
sued, which  consists,  as  in  geography,  in  taking  the  com- 
mune as  the  starting-point,  and  thence  passing  progres- 
sively to  the  study  of  the  department  and  the  state.  Famil- 
iarized at  first  with  the  institutions  which  are,  so  to  speak, 
within  his  reach,  and  which  he  sees  in  operation  in  his  vil- 
lage, the  child  will  have  no  difficulty  in  rising  higher,  and 
will  be  wholly  prepared  to  conceive  the  more  complicated 
play  of  the  government  itself.  But  all  this  on  the  condition 
that  the  teacher  knows  how  to  avoid  dry  ness,  that  he  does 
not  multiply  useless  details,  that  he  excites  the  child's  curi- 
osity, that  he  appeals  to  his  patriotic  feelings,  that  he 
always  shows  him  what  advantage  he  will  derive  in  life 
from  the  knowledge  which  he  acquires  at  school,  and  how 
much  he  needs  to  know  all  that  can  be  taught  him  on  this 
point,  in  order  to  fulfill  later  his  duties  as  a  citizen  and  to 
exercise  a  citizen's  rights. 

447.  Civic  INSTRUCTION  AND  HISTORY. — History,  which 
teaches  us  the  past  of  our  country,  is  one  thing,  and  civic 


412  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

instruction,  which  makes  known  to  us  its  present  state,  its 
actual  organization,  is  quite  another.  However,  we  must 
never  separate  ' '  to-day  "  and  "  formerly  "  ;  and  civic  in- 
struction will  not  be  fruitful  unless  it  is  ever  stimulating  a 
comparison  between  contemporary  institutions  and  ancient 
institutions. 

Of  course  a  large  spirit  of  toleration,  and  even  of  respect, 
should  animate  the  instructor  in  the  comparisons  which  he 
will  have  to  make  between  the  past  and  the  present.  In 
praising  the  actual  state  of  affairs,  he  should  have  a  fear 
lest  he  unduly  undervalue  and  misrepresent  what  now  is  no 
more.  This  has  been  eloquently  said  by  Jules  Ferry : 

"  I  do  not  like  to  have  it  said  to  children,  '  There  is  nothing  but 
contemporary  history.'  Ah  !  it  was  doubtless"  a  happy  thought 
and  a  real  step  in  advance  to  introduce  contemporary  history  into 
the  programmes  of  our  elementary  instruction ;  but  let  us  be  on 
our  guard  against  an  opposite  extreme.  Do  not  think  it  wise  to 
say  to  youth,  '  Back  of  1789,  back  of  that  brilliant  and  renovating 
date,  there  is  nothing,  nothing  but  sadness,  nothing  but  misery, 
nothing  but  shame.'  In  the  first  place  this  is  not  true,  and  then 
such  talk  is  not  wholesome  for  youth." 1 

448.  Civic  INSTRUCTION  AND  POLITICS.  —  By  reason  of  its 
relations  with  politics,  civic  instruction  falls  upon  rocks 
where  it  is  easy  to  make  shipwreck.  The  instructor  should 
be  on  his  guard  against  making  of  his  pupils  little  journal- 
ists and  embryo  politicians,  without  forgetting,  however, 
what  he  owes  his  country  and  the  respect  which  is  due  to 
the  established  government. 

As  some  one  has  said,  we  ought  not  to  carry  politics  into 
the  school,  "if  we  mean  by  politics  what  occurs  day  after 
day  in  the  Chambers,  who  is  the  Minister  to-day,  and  who 
will  be  the  Minister  to-morrow." 

1  Discours  au  Se'nat,  du  10  Juin,  1882. 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  413 

But  if  we  understand  by  politics  a  knowledge  of  the  great 
principles  of  liberty,  of  equality,  and  of  fraternal  solidarity, 
which  are  the  foundation  of  modern  societies,  and  which  the 
sons  of  the  Revolution  had  to  defend  against  the  laggards 
and  against  the  impatient ;  if  we  understand  by  politics 
love  of  country  and  attachment  to  the  Republic,  we  say  yes, 
and  believe  that  it  is  never  too  soon  to  inculcate  the  idea  of 
it,  and  that  this  sort  of  politics  is  fit  for  all  periods  of  life. 

The  law  of  March  22,  1882,  put  moral  and  civic  instruc- 
tion among  the  obligatory  topics  of  instruction  in  the  pri- 
mary schools  for  boys  and  girls.  Hereafter  moral  and  civic 
instruction  will  take  among  the  required  studies,  between 
grammar  and  arithmetic,  the  place  which  it  has  the  right  to 
claim  as  a  valuable  instrument  for  popular  education  and  as 
a  branch  of  instruction  particularly  necessary  in  a  land  of 
universal  suffrage,  in  a  great  democracy  which  it  would  be 
of  no  use  to  emancipate  if  it  were  not  at  the  same  time 
enlightened  as  to  its  rights  and  its  duties. 

449.  LAY  RIGHTS  IN  THE  MATTER  OF  MORAL  EDUCATION. 
—  The  work  of  the  teacher  is  not  done  when  he  has  culti- 
vated and  adorned  the  minds  of  his  pupils,  and  has  fur- 
nished them  with  technical  knowledge  for  the  combats  of 
life.  He  derives  from  his  title  as  teacher,  he  has  received 
from  the  confidence  of  families,  a  still  higher  office.  By 
virtue  of  his  office  and  according  to  his  position,  he  is  the 
educator  of  the  rising  generation. 

It  would  certainly  be  easier,  supposing  this  were  possible, 
to  confine  himself  strictly  to  his  professional  duties,  to  be 
simply  a  teacher  of  French,  history,  or  mathematics  ;  to  go 
no  deeper  than  the  surface  of  the  mind ;  not  to  touch  the 
living  and  inner  reality  of  beliefs,  and  in  a  word,  as  some 
one  has  said,  "to  be  nothing  but  a  sort  of  dancing-master 
of  the  intelligence." 


414  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

But  whether  he  will  or  not,  by  the  very  nature  of  his 
duties,  by  his  ceaseless  influence  on  the  souls  of  the  chil- 
dren confided  to  his  care,  the  teacher  necessarily  assumes 
a  higher  responsibility.  He  intervenes  not  only  through 
direct  moral  lessons,  but  through  the  spirit  which  pro- 
ceeds from  all  his  instruction,  and  still  more  through  his 
example,  in  the  moral  training  of  his  pupils ;  and  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  this  is  his  duty  and  his  right. 

Yes,  we  boldly  claim  for  lay  teachers  the  title  of  educa- 
tors and  moralists.  In  order  to  perform  this  august  part,  it 
is  not  necessary  to  wear  the  robes  of  a  priest.  It  is  suffi- 
cient to  be  a  man,  an  upright  man. 

By  what  right,  some  one  will  say,  do  you  teach  morals  ? 
By  the  right  which  every  good  man  has,  who  is  at  the  same 
time  a  teacher,  to  communicate  to  his  pupils  that  which  is 
his  most  precious  treasure,  —  moral  truth,  the  most  essential 
and  most  important  of  all.  Do  I  need  to  say  that  this  task, 
if  it  is  the  most  noble,  is  also  the  most  delicate'?  It  is  espe- 
cially on  this  point  that  the  intentions  of  the  University  are 
misunderstood  and  its  work  suspected.  We  are  treated  as 
usurpers  and  as  the  enemies  of  religion ;  and,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  certain  political  partisans,  "  the  common  school 
became  a  godless  school  on  the  day  when  the  teaching  of 
morals  was  officially  introduced  into  it." 

We  should  have  deserved  these  reproaches  if  we  had  for 
a  single  moment  forgotten  what  respect  and  regard  we  owe 
to  the  religious  consciousness  and  the  confessional  belief  of 
our  pupils  ;  but  it  must  be  evident  to  every  candid  man  that 
in  undertaking  to  teach  human  morals,  the  eternal  moral  law, 
we  do  not  purpose  in  any  way  to  trespass  on  the  rights  of 
parents  or  of  the  ministers  of  religion.  Though  we  are  the 
sincere  and  ardent  defenders  of  the  rights  of  modern  so- 
ciety, we  are  none  the  less  conscious  of  the  respect  which  a 
government  worthy  of  the  name  owes  to  the  consciences  of 


MORALS   AND   CIVIC   INSTRUCTION.  415 

religious  men.  What  is  more  worthy  of  our  respect  than 
the  conscience  of  a  child,  a  nascent  and  as  yet  undeveloped 
conscience,  an  easy  prey  to  all  doctrines,  which  offers  itself 
to  our  instruction  with  the  ingenuous  docility  of  early  years, 
and  which  would  so  easily  allow  itself  to  be  fashioned  in  the 
mould  where  it  might  please  us  to  put  it?  But  this  con- 
science, God  forbids  us  to  touch  it  and  to  take  it  in  hand, 
not  only  because  this  child's  conscience  is  the  whole  future 
of  the  man  and  has  its  individual  rights,  but  also  because 
back  of  it,  if  we  were  guilty  enough  to  wish  to  turn  it  aside 
from  its  natural  aspirations,  we  should  perceive  the  will  of 
the  parents,  the  rights  of  the  family,  and  the  whole  inherit- 
ance of  traditional  beliefs. 

If  there  is  still  any  one  who  imagines  that  in  giving  moral 
and  civic  instruction  to  all  grades  of  public  education,  we 
have  desired  to  raise  altar  against  altar,  to  oppose  the 
teacher  to  the  priest  or  to  the  pastor,  to  establish  some  com~ 
petition  between  the  manual  and  the  catechism,  that  we  have 
desired  by  the  side  of  each  temple  or  each  church  to  estab- 
lish a  school  of  irreligiou  and  impiety,  so  that  the  child  on 
leaving  the  primary  school  passes  before  the  doors  of  the 
church  or  the  temple  with  the  spirit  of  indifference  or  of 
scoffing,  he  is  mistaken ;  and  we  protest  against  these  impu- 
tations with  all  the  power  of  our  conscience  as  a  man,  a 
patriot,  and  a  republican. 

Our  only  thought  has  been  that,  at  a  time  when  we  are 
concerned  with  what  is  of  vital  interest  to  a  great  nation,  — 
I  mean  the  moralization  of  the  people,  —  it  is  not  expecting 
too  much  of  the  good-will  and  devotion  of  all,  that  moral 
lessons  should  not  lose  all  their  efficacy  for  not  being 
clothed  with  an  ecclesiastical  character ;  but  that  lay  teach- 
ers may  participate  in  this  instruction.  And  when  we  have 
thus  assumed  our  part  of  the  common  task,  instead  of  curs- 
ing us  as  adversaries,  perhaps  it  may  be  more  just  to  give  tic 
thanks  as  co-laborers- 


416  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

We  shall  not  lose  heart.  We  shall  continue  to  invite  all 
the  pupils  of  our  colleges  and  schools  to  the  neutral  ground 
of  instruction  in  morals,  where  we  attack  no  religion,  where 
we  preach  justice,  charity,  and  tolerance,  which  is  charity 
towards  ideas.  We  shall  continue  to  build  upon  these  solid 
foundations  the  human  city,  while  leaving  to  the  ministers 
of  religion  the  task  of  building  by  the  side  of  it  what  St. 
Augustine  called  the  City  of  God.1 

1  The  public  school  system  of  France,  taken  collectively,  and 
including  all  the  grades  of  instruction,  is  known  as  the  "  University  of 
Prance,"  and  is  under  the  direction  of  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion. The  significance  of  paragraph  449  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
schools  of  France  have  been  secularized,  —  that  is,  taken  wholly  from 
the  hands  of  ecclesiastics  and  administered  by  laymen.  The  church 
is  naturally  aggrieved  at  this,  claims  the  teaching  of  morals  as  one  of 
its  prerogatives,  and  pronounces  the  state  schools  godless.  (P.) 


CHAPTER  IX. 

DRAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING. 

450.  DRAWING  IN  THE  COMMON  SCHOOL.  —  Drawing  has 
long  been  considered  as  an  accomplishment,  as  a  fancy 
study  reserved  to  people  of  leisure  or  to  professional  artists. 
It  has  resulted  from  this  that  drawing  has  for  a  long  time 
been  omitted  from  the  programme  of  common  school  in- 
struction. But  it  has  now  gained  the  day.  For  several 
years  past  the  teaching  of  drawing  has  been  obligatory  in 
most  of  the  schools  of  Europe.  As  some  one  has  said, 
"  there  is  an  advent  of  drawing,  as  well  as  of  science,  in  edu- 
cation." It  is  acknowledged  on  all  sides  that  drawing  is 
not  only  an  elevated  recreation  and  a  preparation  for  an 
appreciation  of  the  beautiful,  but  it  is  also  the  prime  con- 
dition of  all  progress  in  the  different  branches  of  artistic 
industry. 

"  Without  drawing,  no  skillful  workmen,  no  good  superintend- 
ents of  manufactories,  no  progress  and  excellence  in  the  highest 
industries,  those  which  give  proof  of  civilization." l 

"  The  advantages  which  can  be  derived  from  drawing,  through 
its  happy  applications  to  the  mechanic  arts,  are  infinitely  valuable. 
It  is  the  soul  of  several  branches  of  commerce ;  it  is  drawing 
which  gives  the  preference  to  the  industries  of  a  nation ;  it  in- 
creases the  value  of  crude  material  a  hundred-fold.  Cloths, 
jewelry,  trinkets,  porcelain,  carpets, — all  the  trades  relating  to 
the  arts  cannot  be  carried  on,  except  through  the  principles  of 
drawing."  a 

1  See  the  article  PESSIX  in  the  Dir/ionnaire  de  pedagogic. 

2  Bachelier,  Discows  sur  VntilUe'des  e'coles  tfe'mentaires. 

417 


418  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

451.  HISTORICAL:  ROUSSEAU.  —  Rousseau  was  the  first  in 
France  to  recommend  the  study  of  drawing,  —  drawing 
from  nature,  moreover,  with  the  intention  of  making  skillful 
workmen  rather  than  elegant  artists. 

"  We  could  not  learn  to  judge  correctly  of  the  width  and  height 
of  objects  except  by  learning  to  know  also  their  shapes,  and  even 
to  copy  them  ;  for  at  bottom  this  copying  is  absolutely  dependent 
on  the  laws  of  perspective  ;  and  we  cannot  estimate  the  size  from 
these  appearances  except  we  have  some  perception  of  these  laws. 
Children,  who  are  great  imitators,  all  try  their  hand  at  drawing. 
I  would  have  my  child  cultivate  this  art,  not  especially  for  the  art 
itself,  but  in  order  to  make  his  eye  true  and  his  hand  dextrous ; 
and  in  general  it  is  of  very  little  consequence  that  he  understand 
such  or  such  an  exercise,  provided  he  acquire  the  perspicacity  of 
sense  and  the  correct  habit  of  body  that  are  generally  acquired 
through  that  exercise.  I  would  be  very  loth,  therefore,  to  give 
him  a  drawing-master  who  should  give  him  only  imitations  to  imitate, 
and  who  should  make  him  draw  only  after  drawings ;  I  would  have 
him  have  no  teacher  but  nature,  and  no  other  models  but  objects. 
I  would  have  before  his  eyes  the  very  original,  and  not  the  paper 
which  represents  it ;  and  I  would  have  him  sketch  a  house  from  a 
house,  a  tree  from  a  tree,  a  man  from  a  man,  in  order  that  he  may 
accustom  himself  to  observe  bodies  and  their  appearances  cor- 
rectly, and  not  to  accept  false  and  conventional  imitations  for  real 
imitations.  I  would  even  discourage  him  from  tracing  anything 
from  memory,  in  the  absence  of  objects,  until  by  frequent  obser- 
vations their  exact  shapes  are  firmly  impressed  on  his  imagina- 
tion ;  for  fear  that  by  substituting  odd  and  fantastic  figures  for 
the  actual  things,  he  lose  all  knowledge  of  proportion  and  a  taste 
for  the  beauties  of  nature. 

"I  very  well  know  that  in  this  way  he  will  scrawl  for  a  long 
time  without  making  anything  that  is  recognizable,  and  that  he 
will  be  late  in  acquiring  elegance  of  contour  and  the  light  touch 
of  draftsmen,  and  perhaps  never  the  appreciation  of  picturesque 
effects  and  fine  taste  in  drawing ;  but  on  the  other  hand  he  will 
certainly  acquire  a  truer  vision,  a  steadier  hand,  a  knowledge  of 
the  real  similarities  of  size  and  shape  among  animals,  plants,  and 


DEAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING.  41 9 

natural  bodies,  and  a  more  ready  acquaintance  with  the  shifting 
of  perspective."  l 

Rousseau  is  wrong  in  absolutely  proscribing  the  imitation 
of  artificial  models.  Another  error  is  that  he  very  sharply 
separates  drawing  from  geometry.  "  Geometry,"  he  says, 
"  is  for  our  pupils  but  the  art  of  making  a  good  use  of  the 
rule  and  compass ;  and  it  must  not  be  confounded  with 
drawing,  which  will  employ  neither  of  these  instruments." 

452.  PESTALOZZI  AND  FROEBEL.  — After  Rousseau,  Pesta- 
lozzi  and  Froebel  are  the  ones  who  have  done  the  most  to 
popularize  elementary  instruction  in  drawing. 

For  Pestalozzi,  geometrical  forms  constitute  the  very 
essence  of  drawing.  The  pupil  will  first  draw  straight 
lines,  squares,  triangles,  and  arcs  of  the  circle.  Later, 
when  the  aesthetic  element  of  form  is  separated  from  the 
purely  mathematical  element,  and  the  pupil  has  gained  a 
clear  consciousness  of  it,  exercises  in  linear  drawing  will  be 
followed  by  lessons  in  perspective  and  in  artistic  drawing. 

The  drawing  of  lines  is  but  a  preparation  for  the  drawing 
of  objects. 

"  It  is  not  lines,"  he  says,  "  that  nature  gives  the  child ;  she 
gives  him  only  objects ;  and  we  should  give  him  lines  only  to  aid 
him  in  seeing  objects  correctly,  and  we  should  guard  against 
removing  the  objects  from  him  and  making  him  see  only  lines." 

Pestalozzi  did  hardly  more  than  lay  down  principles ; 
Froebel  has  applied  them.  Like  Pestalozzi,  he  takes  geo- 
metrical figures  as  the  starting-point. 

"  From  the  start  the  child  has  before  him  a  table  divided  into 
squares,  and  then  a  slate  divided  into  squares.  Balls,  cubes,  thin 
strips  of  wood,  taken  in  turn,  familiarize  him  with  geometrical 

i  Emite,  I,  IL 


420  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

forms;  yarns  and  strips  of  paper  drill  him  in  distinguishing 
colors.  What  he  has  seen  he  will  naturally  reproduce.  For 
guiding  his  first  attempts  it  suffices  to  make  him  begin  with 
elementary  forms.  He  commences  by  seeing  concrete  and  tan- 
gible lines,  so  to  speak,  represented  by  sticks ;  at  first  he  has  only 
to  lay  down  and  arrange  in  different  ways  the  laths  or  the  cubes 
in  order  to  obtain  regular  figures.  Very  soon,  by  weaving  the 
strips  of  paper,  he  himself  produces  mosaics  in  little  squares  of 
several  colors.  Finally,  when  he  takes  the  pencil  in  hand,  it  is 
easy  for  him  to  represent  on  the  slate  or  on  paper  the  combina- 
tions which  he  has  produced  with  these  sticks,  cubes,  and  strips 
of  paper,  and  by  means  of  the  incitements  of  analogy  and  the 
help  of  the  squares  which  guide  him  without  restraining  him,  and 
by  means  of  the  growing  instinct  of  harmony  and  symmetry 
which  kindergarten  training  marvelously  develops,  he  cannot 
restrict  himself  to  imitating,  but  he  invents  almost  at  once  new 
combinations  of  lines  whose  regular  arrangement  delights  him  and 
gives  him  ceaseless  encouragement  to  new  efforts." 1 

453.  DEFINITION  OF  TERMS.  —  Usage  has  sanctioned  cer- 
tain  expressions,   according  to  which  drawing  would  com- 
prise different  varieties  which  are  wholly  distinct,  such  as 
linear,  geometrical,  ornamental,  artistic,  or  imitative  draw- 
ing.      Linear  drawing  is  in  truth  nothing  but   geometrical 
drawing, — that  is,  drawing  which  is  more  specially  applied 
to  the  representation  of  objects  geometrically  defined.     Or- 
namental drawing  is  but  a  development  of  geometrical  draw- 
ing.     Finally,  artistic  or    imitative    drawing    is    generally 
applied  to  the  representation  of  the  human  figure. 

454.  ACTUAL  PROGRAMMES.  —  The  teaching   of   drawing 
was  not  made  obligatory  in  the  common  schools  of  France 
till  1882.     The  decree  of  July  27,   1882,  requires  that  the 
teaching  of  drawing,  begun  with  very  short  lessons  in  the 
elementary  course,  "  shall  occupy  in  the  two  other  courses 
two  or  three  lessons  each  week." 

1 T 

1  M.  Buisson,  Rapport  sur  I'exposUion  d$  Vienne,  p.  247. 


DRAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING.  42 1 

The  programme  indicates,  as  matter  for  the  elementary 
course,  the  tracing  of  lines  and  the  first  principles  of  orna- 
mental drawing. 

For  the  intermediate  course,  free-hand  drawing,  ordinary 
geometrical  curves,  and  curves  borrowed  from  the  vegetable 
world ;  copying  from  casts  representing  ornaments,  and  the 
first  notion  of  geometrical  drawing  as  related  to  the  dimen- 
sions, form,  and  position  of  the  parts  of  an  object ;  finally, 
geometrical  drawing  with  the  use  of  the  rule,  the  compass, 
the  square,  and  the  protractor.  In  this  part  of  the  course 
the  effort  will  be  limited  to  making  pupils  understand  the 
use  of  those  instruments  which  they  are  to  handle  in  the 
higher  course. 

For  the  higher  course,  elementary  notions  on  the  orders 
of  architecture  and  the  drawing  of  the  human  head  are 
added  to  the  free-hand  drawing.  As  to  geometrical  draw- 
ing, the  traces  hitherto  executed  on  the  board  will  now  be 
made  on  paper  with  the  aid  of  instruments.  The  principles 
of  tinting  are  given,  and  decorative  drawings  are  executed 
in  china  ink  and  color. 

455.  Ax  WHAT  AGE  SHOULD  INSTRUCTION  IN  DRAWING 
BEGIN? — When  the  child  writes  rapidly  and  well,  said 
Locke,  I  think  that  it  is  proper,  not  only  to  continue  to 
exercise  his  hands  by  writing,  but  even  to  give  extension 
to  his  skill  by  teaching  him  to  draw.  In  fact,  there  are 
striking  similarities  between  writing  and  drawing,  and 
these  two  exercises  may  and  should  lend  one  another 
mufual  support.  So  in  imitation  of  Froebel  we  cannot 
too  much  encourage  the  teaching  of  drawing  even  in  the 
infant  school. 

"  Nothing  could  be  better  adapted  to  a  little  child  than  drawing, 
which  occupies  his  eyes  and  his  hand,  and  compels  him,  by  th« 
very  nature  of  the  exercise  and  without  the  necessity  of  inviting 


422  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

him  to  it,  to  observe  attentively,  to  compare,  and  to  combine.  We 
intentionally  underscore  this  last  word,  because  it  correctly  indi- 
cates the  superiority  of  drawing  over  the  other  exercises  in  obser- 
vation, where  the  child  looks  without  having  to  reproduce  what 
he  sees.  In  the  most  modest  attempts  at  drawing,  there  is  an 
element  of  creation,  an  active  personal  part  which  constitutes  one 
of  the  greatest  attractions  of  this  kind  of  work.  With  the  pencil 
in  hand,  the  child  invents  even  more  than  he  copies."  l 

456.  CHILDREN'S    TASTE    FOR    DRAWING. —  All   the   ob- 
servers  of  human  nature,  and  notably   Mr.   Spencer,  -have 
observed  the  child's  taste  for  drawing. 

"The  spreading  recognition  of  drawing  as  an  element  of 
education  is  one  amongst  many  signs  of  the  more  rational 
views  on  mental  culture  now  beginning  to  prevail.  Once  more 
it  may  be  remarked  that  teachers  are  at  length  adopting  the 
course  which  nature  has  for  ages  been  pressing  upon  their 
notice.  The  spontaneous  efforts  made  by  children  to  represent 
men,  houses,  trees,  and  animals  around  them, — on  a  slate,  if 
they  can  get  nothing  better,  or  with  lead-pencil  or  paper,  if 
they  can  beg  them,  —  are  familiar  to  all.  To  be  shown 
through  a  picture-book  is  one  of  their  highest  gratifications; 
and  as  usual  their  strong  imitative  tendency  presently  generates 
in  them  the  ambition  to  make  pictures  themselves  also.  This 
attempt  to  depict  the  striking  things  they  see  is  a  farther 
instinctive  exercise  of  the  perceptions,  —  a  means  whereby  still 
greater  accuracy  and  completeness  of  observation  is  induced. 
And,  alike  by  seeking  to  interest  us  in  their  discoveries  of 
the  sensible  properties  of  things,  and  by  their  endeavors  to 
draw,  they  solicit  from  us  just  that  kind  of  culture  which 
they  most  need."  2 

457.  TASTE  FOR  COLORING. — Mr.  Spencer  has  also   ob- 
served that  the  process  of  representation  which  most  charms 
and  attracts  the  child  is  coloring. 

1  Mile.  Chalamet,  L'Ecole  maternelle,  p.  135. 

2  Spencer,  op.  cit.,  p.  140. 


DRAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING.  423 

"  Paper  and  pencil  are  good,  in  default  of  something  better ; 
but  a  box  of  paints  and  a  brush, — these  are  the  treasures.  The 
drawing  of  outlines  immediately  becomes  secondary  to  coloring." 

But  is  it  possible  to  introduce  the  use  of  colors  into  the 
common  school?  The  programme  admits  of  it  in  a  certain 
measure,  since  it  is  prescribed  for  the  infant  classes  in  the 
following  terms : 

"  Combination  of  lines.  Representation  of  these  combinations 
on  slate  and  paper  with  an  ordinary  pencil,  or  by  tracing  in  color." 

Also  in  the  higher  course  of  the  common  school,  the  pro- 
gramme, as  we  have  seen,  recommends  exercises  in  tinting 
with  china  ink  and  in  color. 

458.  Two  DIFFERENT  METHODS.  — It  is  none  the  less  true 
that  the  most  important  thing  in  drawing  is  the  line  and  its 
combinations,  and  not  color  and  its  shades. 

What  method  shall  be  followed  to  familiarize  the  child,  as 
surely  and  as  rapidly  as  possible,  with  the  study  of  lines  ? 
Two  systems  are  before  us,  —  on  the  one  hand,  that  which 
would  not  have  geometry  made  the  basis  of  instruction  in 
drawing,  which  asserts  that  the  human  form,  as  being  that 
which  is  most  perfect  and  most  harmonious  in  its  propor- 
tions, should  serve  as  the  point  of  departure  in  drawing ; 
on  the  other  hand  the  classical  method,  which  proceeds  log- 
ically, analytically  so  to  speak,  and  which,  before  presenting 
wholes  for  the  imitation  of  the  child,  drills  him  in  reproduc- 
ing the  elements  of  every  figure  and  of  every  form,  —  that 
is,  the  lines  in  their  different  combinations. 

459.  MR.  SPENCER'S  OPINION.  —  Mr.  Spencer  vigorously 
condemns  the  method  which  consists  "•  in  making   straight 
lines  and  curved  lines  and  compound  lines,  with  which  it  is 
the  fashion  of  some  teachers  to  begin."     This  is,  he  says, 
to  renew  in  the  teaching  of   drawing  the  exercises  which 


424  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

have  been  abandoned  in  the  teaching  of  languages ;  it  is 
again  placing  the  abstract  before  the  concrete. 

It  is  difficult  to  prove,  however,  that  lines,  even  though 
they  are  but  the  elements  of  real  forms,  constitute  anything 
abstract.  This  is  as  though,  in  the  teaching  of  reading,  we 
should  forbid  the  child  to  learn  the  letters  which  are  the 
elements  of  words.  It  seems  to  us  that  it  is  best  to  place 
at  the  beginning  of  the  studies  in  drawing  the  tracing  of 
lines,  their  division  into  equal  parts,  and  the  estimation  of 
the  relation  of  lines  to  one  another.  This,  according  to  Mr. 
Spencer's  expression,  is  a  "grammar,"  or  rather  an  alpha- 
bet, of  forms,  which  must  necessarily  be  learned  before 
going  farther. 

Mr.  Spencer's  opinion  is  also  that  which  is  advocated  in 
France  by  M.  Ravaisson. 

"In  its  most  elementary  processes,"  he  says,  "to  which  all 
others  may  be  reduced,  drawing  reposes  on  a  judgment 
of  a  special  nature,  entirely  different  from  that  judgment 
which  is  employed  in  mathematics.  .  .  .  The  best  means  of 
drawing  any  object  whatever  will  then  be  to  study  the  objects 
in  which  are  found  in  the  highest  degree  those  qualities  which 
constitute  their  harmony  and  beauty,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
appropriate,  at  least  as  much  as  one  is  capable  of  doing  and  as 
his  time  will  permit,  the  spirit  which  characterizes  them.  This 
will  be  to  study  the  complete  types  of  the  highest  perfection 
which  nature  presents  to  us.  Even  for  him  who  will  have,  in 
the  practice  of  the  trade  to  which  he  devotes  himself,  only  to 
execute  the  more  modest  task  of  imitation,  the  best  method  for 
succeeding  as  promptly  as  possible  in  fulfilling  his  duties  properly 
will  then  be  the  one  which  all  teachers  have  always  prescribed, 
and  which  consists  in  studying  for  a  long  time,  and  as  long  as 
one  is  able,  the  types  in  which  is  exhibited  the  unity  which 
impresses  on  forms  their  character,  and  especially  the  higher 
unity  in  which  beauty  resides."  1 

1  See  article  Art  in  the  Diet,  de  pedagogic. 


DRAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING.  425 

The  method  proposed  by  M.  Ravaisson  is  undoubtedly 
the  most  favorable  for  the  development  of  the  aesthetic  fac- 
ulties and  of  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful.  It  is  the  one 
perhaps  which  we  would  recommend  if  it  were  proposed  in  a 
common  school  to  train,  artists  ;  but  in  the  humble  sphere  in 
which  the  destinies  of  elementary  instruction  are  placed,  it 
seems  to  us  more  rational  to  follow  the  other  method,  that 
which  is  based  on  the  solid  elements  borrowed  from  geomet- 
rical representations. 

460.  CLASSICAL  OPINION.  — This  method  has  been  bril- 
liantly defended  by  M.  E.  Guillaume,1  and  it  is  impossible 
more  strongly  to  enforce  the  reasons  which  justify  the 
preference  which  we  have  given  it.  M.  Guillaume  observes 
that  it  is  not  so  much  a  question  of  sentiment  as  of 
practical  habits,  and  that  drawing  ought  not  to  remain  in 
the  domain  of  uncertainties,  but  that  it  must  have  a  rational 
basis. 

"From  the  fact  that  drawing  serves  as  a  mode  of  expression 
in  the  fine  arts,  it  is  inferred  that  art  is  its  principal,  if  not  its 
unique  object,  and  that  in  the  teaching  of  drawing  it  is  art 
that  should  be  principally  kept  in  view.  The  general  and  use- 
ful phase,  the  means  of  precision  which  it  borrows  from  science 
and  which  serve  as  a  necessary  support  even  to  the  concep- 
tions of  the  artist,  are  despised ;  and  before  knowing  how  to 
draw  a  line  or  recognize  its  direction,  moral  expression  becomes 
the  theme.  In  a  trice  accuracy  is  sacrificed  to  sentiment.  Taste 
is  exalted  as  the  supreme  rule,  and  the  fundamental  principles 
and  exercises,  without  which,  farther  on,  neither  inspiration  nor 
actual  works  can  be  produced  with  certainty,  are  treated  with 
disdain.  The  ideal  is  exalted  and  pupils  are  enamored  of 
aesthetic  theories,  l>efore  being  inured  to  practice  and  becoming 
masters  of  the  laws  which  control  it.  Finally,  the  attention  is 


1  See  article  DESSIN  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  pedagogic. 


426  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

fixed  on  the  artistic  vocations  which  are  the  exception,  while  an 
appeal  should  be  made  to  the  mass,  where  it  is  a  question  of 
children  whose  intelligence  is  developed  progressively,  and  most 
of  whom  are  destined  to  be  workmen.  Is  there  not  a  danger 
in  appealing  to  the  initiative  and  independence  of  sentiment 
when  the  only  proper  course  is  to  give  direction  and  discipline 
to  minds  ?  However  little  a  child  may  follow  a  course  in  drawing, 
he  should  carry  away  from  it  definite  ideas  and  practical  hab- 
its which  will  be  of  use  to  him  during  his  entire  life." 

M.  Guillaume  concludes  that  in  practice,  as  in  theory,  it 
.is  geometry  that  is  the  basis  of  the  science  of  drawing,  and 
that  we  have  to  do  with  industrial  drawing  or  with  artistic 
drawing.  If  any  other  course  is  taken,  it  is  very  difficult 
to  arrive  at  exactness,  and  the  draftsman  will  run  a  great 
risk  of  always  remaining  in  indecision  and  vagueness. 

But  this  rigorous  and  scientific  method  does  not  exclude 
the  pursuits  of  the  beautiful  and  the  education  of  the  aes- 
thetic sense ;  only,  instead  of  being  the  point  of  departure, 
the  human  figure  will  be  the  coronation  of  the  studies  in 
drawing.  In  the  higher  course,  the  copying  of  figures  after 
the  antique  will  exercise  the  taste. 

"  From  these  admirable  specimens  of  an  art  which  has  never 
been  surpassed,  the  pupil  will  develop  the  artistic  faculties 
which  may  exist  within  him.  Trained  from  the  first  to  draw- 
ing with  exactness  and  precision,  he  will  never  remain  power- 
less to  translate  the  delicate  or  strong  works  which  have  been 
transmitted  to  us  by  the  most  brilliant  epochs  of  art." 

461.  PARTICULAR  ADVICE. — It  would  require  too  much 
time  to  enter  into  a  detail  of  the  school  usages  which  are 
best  adapted  to  the  teaching  of  drawing.  Let  us  note 
merely  a  few  essential  points. 

I.  So  far  as  possible,  the  first  models  ought  to  be  real 
objects.  The  programme  of  the  maternal  schools  rightly 


DRAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING.  42  7 

places  by  the  side  of  the  drawings  made  by  the  mistress, 
which  the  pupil  reproduces,  "  the  representation  of  the 
most  simple  objects  of  daily  use."  In  other  terms,  the 
pupil  ought  not  to  be  exclusively  restricted  to  the  study 
of  pure  geometrical  forms.  It  is  well  that  he  be  early 
exercised  in  reading  and  translating  the  forms  of  natural 
objects. 

II.  At  first  only  figures   of   two   dimensions  —  that  is, 
planes  —  must  be  drawn.     Figures  in  relief  ought  to  be  re- 
served for  a  later  period. 

III.  Ornamental  drawing   ought    to   follow   geometrical 
drawing. 

IV.  Elementary  instruction  in   drawing,  even  when   we 
have  in  view  only  industrial  drawing,  ought  not  to  neglect 
the  human  form. 

V.  The   principles   of   industrial   drawing    ought    to    be 
taught  pan'  passu  with  exercises  in  drawing.      tk  The   ac- 
quisition of  technical  skill  by  the  hand  is  hastened,  rather 
than  retarded,  by  the  study  of  these  principles." 

462.  SINGING  IN  THE  COMMON  SCHOOL.  — The  teaching  of 
the  arts  proper  in  the  common  school  is  reduced  to  singing 
and  drawing.  But  drawing  is  especially  a  useful  art,  the 
study  of  which  prepares  the  ordinary  child  for  his  future 
vocation  as  a  laborer  or  an  artisan  ;  it  is  only  incidentally  an 
element  of  aesthetic  education.  It  tends  rather  to  develop 
manual  skill  than  to  cultivate  the  sentiment  of  the  beautiful. 
On  the  contrary,  music  and  singing  have  not  the  same  prac- 
tical utility.  They  have  been  introduced  into  the  common 
school  chiefly  as  measures  of  gratifying  the  feelings,  of  touch- 
ing the  heart,  and  of  exciting  the  noblest  emotions  of  the 
soul.  Hence  the  particular  importance  of  singing,  which 
seems  to  involve  all  that  can  be  demanded  of  a'sthetic  edu- 
cation in  the  common  school. 


428  PEACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

463.  SINGING  IN  THE  MATERNAL  SCHOOL.  —  On  this  sub- 
ject we  cannot  do  better  than  reproduce  the  very  judicious 
observations  of  Mile.  Chalamet. 

"Singing  has  always  had  a  place  in  our  infant  schools,  and 
with  justice.  It  may  render  important  service  in  the  education 
of  little  children.  It  brings  a  valuable  contribution  to  physical 
development  by  fortifying  the  lungs  and  giving  suppleness  to 
all  the  vocal  organs.  These  organs  are  less  liable  to  the  many 
and  grave  maladies  which  might  affect  them,  especially  in  early 
years,  if  they  have  been  subjected  to  regular  exercise.  By  this 
means  we  provide  for  the  education  of  the  ear ;  we  cultivate 
and  refine  a  sense  which  plays  along  with  vision  a  pre-eminent 
part  in  the  intellectual  existence  of  the  child.  Finally,  singing 
exercises  over  the  mental  condition  of  children  an  influence 
which  makes  of  it  a  potent  instrument  of  education,  and  one 
of  the  surest  and  most  salutary  means  of  discipline  which  can 
be  employed.  Who  does  not  know  the  effect  produced  by  a  song 
introduced  at  the  right  moment  into  a  sleepy,  languid  class,  or 
it  may  be  into  one  agitated  and  disturbed?  Music  has  the  gift 
of  calming  children,  and  at  the  same  time  of  urging  them  to 
activity  by  an  agreeable  excitation.  The  child  loves  music. 
Singing  makes  him  happy,  and  is  for  him  a  natural  need, 
like  running  and  jumping.  Can  we  conceive  an  assembly  of 
little  children  where  there  is  no  singing?  This  would  be  as 
little  normal  and  as  funereal  as  a  garden  whose  plants  never 
saw  the  sun."  * 

Since  1882  singing  has  been  one  of  the  obligatory  topics 
of  common-school  instruction. 

"  Lessons  in  singing,"  says  the  regulation,  "  shall  occupy 
from  one  to  two  hours  a  week,  independently  of  the  exercises 
in  singing  which  will  take  place  every  day,  either  in  the  in- 
tervals between  classes  or  at  the  opening  or  close  of  school." 

464.  MORAL   INFLUENCE   OF   Music.  —  The   ancients   as- 

1  Mile.  Chalamet,  L'Ecole  maternelle,  p.  255. 


DRAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING.  429 

scribed  to  music  a  sovereign  influence  in  moral  education. 
A  well-educated  Athenian  must  know  how  to  sing,  and  the 
education  of  Themistocles,  who  had  not  this  accomplish- 
ment, was  thought  to  have  been  neglected.  Music  was 
regarded  as  the  best  means  of  habituating  citizens  to  order 
and  social  harmony.  "  A  rule  of  music  cannot  be  touched," 
said  Plato,  "without  disturbing  the  foundations  of  the 
state."  It  is  to  the  same  effect  that  Napoleon  the  First 
said,  "A  piece  of  moral  music,  executed  by  the  hand  of  a 
master,  infallibly  touches  the  feelings,  and  has  much  more 
influence  than  a  good  book,  which  convinces  the  reason 
without  influencing  our  habits." 

"From  the  intellectual  point  of  view,"  says  a  contemporary 
author,  M.  Dupaigne,  "  the  result  of  music  is  to  elevate  the 
mind,  to  give  it  a  taste  for  the  beautiful,  of  which  it  is 
perhaps  the  most  sensible  example,  and  to  lead  from  a  taste 
for  the  beautiful  to  a  love  of  study  which  will  give  in  sev- 
eral other  ways  satisfaction  to  this  taste.  In  this  respect 
music  is  one  of  the  most  powerful  auxiliaries,  which  gains 
time  instead  of  losing  it,  because  it  prepares  the  way  for  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  for  things  delicate  and  exalted.  In  pri- 
mary instruction  it  is  music  which  first  represents  the  aesthetic 
phase  of  education,  so  necessary  to  be  mingled  with  the 
commonplaces  of  the  first  elements.  It  is  music  which,  bet- 
ter understood  and  more  easily  grasped  than  literary  beauty, 
more  easily  permits  children  to  feel  the  charm  and  emotion 
produced  by  what  they  have  known  to  be  well  said,  and  the 
delicious  satisfaction  of  having  had  their  part  in  the  pro- 
duction of  something  beautiful.  The  importance  of  such  im- 
pressions for  the  progress  of  a  child's  intelligence  is  not 
necessary  to  be  demonstrated  to  earnest  teachers ;  but  we 
know  that  they  require  in  him  who  would  produce  them  at 
least  that  profound  sentiment  of  art  which  is  called  taste, 
and  that  they  necessarily  exclude  pretence  and  charlatanism. 

"  From  the  moral  point  of  view,  the  effects  of  music  are 
not  less  valuable.  It  may  become  for  young  people  the  most 


430  PEACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

powerful  preservative  against  the  dangers  of  other  pleasures, 
but  on  the  conditions  of  a  careful  choice  in  selections,  and 
of  admitting  within  the  school  only  the  works  of  a  pure 
and  exalted  sentiment,  and  of  not  fearing  to  appeal,  as  much 
as  possible,  to  the  great  masters." 

465.  Music  AND  DISCIPLINE.  —  It  is  useless  to  dwell  on 
the  part  that  music  may  play  in  school  discipline.     Music  not 
only  makes  the  school  attractive,  but  is  an  excellent  means 
for  regulating  the  movements  of  pupils  as  they  enter  and 
leave  the  school-room,  and  of  introducing  order  and  harmony 
into  it ;  it  is,  moreover,  an  excellent  recreation,  which  gives 
repose  from  serious  studies,  and  which  ma}^  during  the  prog- 
ress of  the  classes,  reanimate  the  activity  and  the  spirits  of 
the  pupils. 

466.  CHOICE  OF  PIECES. — It  is   a   matter  of   complaint 
that  there  is  not  yet  a  good  selection  of  pieces  for  use  in  the 
common  schools  ;  and  yet  this  selection  is  a  matter  of  capital 
importance.     These  pieces  ought  to  be  simple,  entertaining, 
with  words  adapted  to  the  age  of  the  child,  —  old  melodies, 
patriotic  songs,  hymns  to  great  men. 

"  Success  in  the  teaching  of  singing  depends,  in  great  part, 
on  the  selection  of  pieces  which  are  given  children  to  sing. 
Their  first  exercises  in  language  had  been  but  the  expression 
of  their  own  ideas,  of  their  own  impressions.  ...  It  should 
be  the  same  with  their  first  exercises  in  singing.  A  collec- 
tio*i  of  pieces,  simple  and  well  graded,  is  of  extreme  impor- 
tance  The  words  ought  also  to  be  as  similar  as  pos- 
sible to  the  very  language  of  children,  so  as  to  be  perfectly 
clear  to  them ;  but  this  condition  does  not  exclude  real 
poetry.  The  subjects  chosen  will  be  of  various  characters; 
they  will  vary  from  serious  to  gay."  1 

1  Eoger  de  Guimps,  Philosophic  de  V Education. 


DRAWING.  —  MUSIC.  —  SINGING.  431 

467.  METHODS  AND  PROCESSES.  —  The  first  thing  to  do  is 
to  train  the  ear  and  the  voice.     The  ear  will  be  trained  by 
hearing  and  the  voice  by  singing. 

In  the  elementary  course,  as  in  the  intermediate  and  higher 
courses,  the  songs  will  be  learned  by  audition. 

As  at  first  musical  theory  will  be  purposely  avoided,  it  is 
merely  the  practical  which  is  of  importance. 

"  Singing,  like  speech,  is  a  matter  of  imitation.  .  .  .  The 
song  must  be  grasped  simply  by  the  ear,  by  singing  it  to 
children,  as  many  times  as  it  may  be  necessary  in  order 
that  the  better  endowed  among  them  may  retain  it  in  a 
manner  well-nigh  correct." 

Obvious  infirmities  in  the  sense  "of  hearing  are  due  in 
general  merely  to  the  lack  of  exercise. 

"  There  is  no  incurable  infirmity,"  says  M.  Dupaigne.  "  It 
is  never  the  ear  unless  one  is  deaf,  but  it  is  exercise  which 
is  lacking." 

The  beginning  will  be  made,  then,  by  requiring  much 
practice  of  the  children.  When  they  have  succeeded  in  sing- 
ing in  unison,  —  that  is,  in  exactly  reproducing  the  sounds 
which  they  hear,  —  the  half  of  the  work  has  been  done. 

An  excellent  piece  of  advice  given  by  M.  Dupaigne  is  to 
select  from  the  children  those  who  have  an  agreeable  and 
reliable  voice,  and  make  them  sing  alone  as  an  example  for 
the  others. 

468.  INTUITION  IN   SINGING.  — Pestalozzi  was  right  in 
thinking  that  as  the  child  learns  to  speak  before  knowing 
how  to  read,  he  ought  to  learn  to  sing  before  knowing  the 
conventional  signs  which  serve  for  writing   music.      The 
child  speaks  because  he  has  heard  speaking ;    so   he   will 
sing  from  having  heard  singing. 


432  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

469.  MUSICAL  THEORY. — In  the  elementary  course,  musi- 
cal theory  will  be  limited  to  the  reading  of  notes.  In  the 
intermediate  and  higher  courses,  on  the  contrary,  the  study 
of  theory  proper  should  be  added  to  the  practical  exercises. 

But  care  should  be  taken  not  to  extend  the  study  of  theory 
too  far.  Teachers  should  spare  their  children  theoretical 
difficulties,  but  train  them  to  utter  sounds  distinctly,  to  control 
their  voice,  to  notice  shades  of  sound,  and  to  have  a  clear  and 
correct  enunciation. 

The  important  thing  is  that  the  child,  on  leaving  the  com- 
mon school,  shall  have  a  taste  for  singing,  and  that  his  musi- 
cal aptitudes  shall  be  so  developed  that  he  may  be  able,  when 
he  has  become  a  young  man,  to  become  a  member  of  a  choral 
society,  which  is  one  of  the  most  commendable  and  useful 
forms  of  popular  association.  By  this  means  the  study  of 
singing  will  have  co-operated  in  general  education ;  it  will 
have  contributed  to  turn  aside  souls  from  gross  pleasures 
and  material  enjoyments,  to  direct  them  towards  innocent 
and  elevated  pleasures. 


CHAPTER    X. 

THE    OTHER    EXERCISES    OF    THE    SCHOOL. 

470.  MANUAL  LABOR  IN  THE  COMMON  SCHOOL. — All  the 
studies,  all  the  school  exercises,  which  we  have  so  far  exam- 
ined are  connected  with  intellectual  and  moral  education, 
although  some  of  them  may  receive  an  immediate  practical 
application.     But  physical  education,  considered  either  as  the 
development  of  the  powers  of  the  body  or  as  an  apprentice- 
ship in  the  qualities  of  expertness,  agility,  manual  dexterity, 
promptness  and  sureness  in  the  movements  which  are  par- 
ticularly important  to  future  workmen,  —  physical  education 
also  demands  its  place  in  the  programme  of  the  common 
schools. 

Hence  the  importance  accorded  to  gymnastics  on  the  one 
hand,  and  to  manual  labor  proper  on  the  other. 

"  Gymnastics,"  says  the  order  of  July  27,  1882,  "  will  occupy 
each  day,  or  at  least  every  other  day,  one  recitation  hour  dur- 
ing the  course  of  the  afternoon." 

"  For  the  boys,  as  well  as  the  girls,  two  or  three  hours  a 
week  will  be  devoted  to  manual  industries." 

What  we  have  said  in  the  first  part  of  this  work  (Chapter 
II.)  makes  it  unnecessary  for  us  to  dwell  on  the  utility  and 
the  nature  of  a  normal  course  of  instruction  in  gymnastics. 

471.  IMPORTANCE  OF  MANUAL  LABOR.  —  "The    national 
school,  in  a  democracy  of  laborers  like  ours,  ought  to  be 
essentially  a  school  of  labor."1     It  is  a  question,  not  only  of 

1  Jules  Ferry.  433 


434  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

developing  the  intellectual  and  moral  faculties  and  of  giving 
a  general  education  which  no  one  in  any  occupation  can 
dispense  with,  but  of  preparing  workmen  for  the  shop  and  of 
training  the  manual  aptitudes.  Without  losing  anything  of 
its  proper  character,  the  common  school  ought  to  be  in  part 
a  preparation  for  the  professional  school. 

The  time  is  no  more  when  manual  labor  was  considered  a 
low  occupation.  The  programme  of  moral  and  civic  in- 
struction, ordered  by  the  higher  council  of  public  instruction, 
contains  an  article  with  this  title  :  "  Nobility  of  Manual 
Labor."  For  three  centuries  educators  like  Locke  and 
Rousseau  have  demanded  that  the  apprenticeship  to  a 
manual  industry  should  be  introduced  even  into  the  in- 
struction of  the  middle  classes,  and  in  general  into  the  edu- 
cation of  all  men.  If  we  have  not  yet  reached  this  point, 
we  have  at  least  placed  manual  labor  in  the  programme 
of  the  common  school ;  and  this  is  surely  a  considerable 
step  in  advance. 

"Be  assured,"  says  Jules  Ferry,  "that  when  the  plane  and 
the  file  shall  have  taken,  by  the  side  of  the  compass,  the  map 
and  the  history,  the  same  place,  the  place  of  honor,  and  shall 
have  been  the  object  of  a  rational  and  systematic  instruction, 
many  prejudices  will  have  disappeared,  many  caste  distinctions 
will  have  vanished.  Social  peace  will  appear  on  the  benches 
of  the  common  school,  and  concord  will  illumine  with  its 
radiant  day  the  future  of  French  society." 

M.  Greard  has  pithily  expressed  the  same  thought. 

"  In  our  opinion  it  is  not  without  some  foundation  that  our 
common  school  studies  are  charged  with  being  too  classical,  in 
the  sense  which  tradition  attaches  to  this  word.  With  respect 
to  history,  geography,  or  language,  we  are  pleased  with  the 
methods  which  befit  an  education  of  leisure.  Everything  draws 
the  higher  classes  of  society  to  the  great  questions  of  history 


THE  OTHER  EXERCISES  OF  THE  SCHOOL.      435 

and  philosophy  which  constitute  the  development  of  human 
civilization,  and  they  have  the  time  to  devote  themselves  to 
them.  But  such  is  not  the  condition  of  those  who.  live  by  the 
labor  of  their  hands,  and  it  seems  that  we  do  not  sufficiently 
consider  the  special  conditions  of  the  aid  which  it  is  the 
object  of  the  common  school  to  assure  to  them,  and  which 
ought  to  be  as  the  intellectual  and  moral  viaticum  of  their 
whole  existence." 

Finally,  the  author  of  the  law  of  1881  on  primary  instruc- 
tion, Paul  Bert,  said  to  the  same  effect : 

"  There  is  no  need  that  any  one  should  misunderstand  our 
real  thought.  We  do  not  demand  that  the  common  school 
become  a  professional  school ;  we  do  not  believe  that  one 
ought  to  come  from  it  either  a  locksmith  or  a  vine-dresser. 
This  is  the  business  of  trade-schools  or  shops,  which  ought 
to  train  artisans,  while  the  school,  accomplishing  a  much 
more  general  work,  trains  men  and  citizens.  But  we  believe 
that  scientific  instruction  ought  not  to  rest  in  the  domain  of 
pure  theory,  but  that  practical  applications  to  the  different 
industries  ought  to  hold  a  large  place  in  it.  Now  it  seems 
to  us  necessary,  in  order  that  this  practical  instruction  may 
bear  all  its  fruits,  that  the  child  should  learn  to  handle  the 
principal  tools  by  the  aid  of  which  man  is  made  the  master 
of  the  materials  which  are  furnished  him  by  nature  and 
the  fundamental  industries,  —  wood,  the  metals,  leather,  etc. 
In  this  innovation  we  think  we  see  a  triple  advantage :  —  a 
physical  advantage,  for  in  learning  to  use  the  plane,  the  saw, 
the  hammer,  the  child  will  complete  his  gymnastic  education, 
and  will  acquire  a  manual  dexterity  which  will  always  be 
useful  to  him,  whatever  he  may  afterwards  do,  and  will  hold 
him  in  readiness,  now  and  always,  for  all  apprenticeships;  an 
intellectual  advantage,  for  the  thousand  little  difficulties  which 
he  will  meet  with  will  accustom  him  to  observation  and  re- 
flection ;  a  social  advantage,  it  may  be  said,  for  after  having 
appreciated  by  his  own  experience  the  qualities  necessary  for 
success  in  professional  duties  and  for  becoming  a  skillful 


436  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

workman,  there  is  not  the  least  fear  that  if  fortune  favors 
him,  to  whatever  position,  he  may  afterwards  come,  he  will 
despise  those  of  his  companions  who  always  work  with  their 
hands." 

472.  MANUAL  INDUSTRIES  IN  SCHOOLS  FOR   BOYS.  —  The 
orders  and  the  programme  of  1882  have  organized  manual 
labor  in  the  common  schools  for  boys,  as  follows : 

"For  the  manual  labor  of  boys  the  exercises  are  divided 
into  two  groups :  One  comprises  the  different  exercises  in- 
tended in  a  general  way  to  limber  the  fingers  and  give  dex- 
terity, suppleness,  rapidity,  and  accuracy  of  movement;  the 
other  group  comprises  graduated  exercises  in  moulding, 
which  serve  as  a  complement  to  the  corresponding  study  of 
drawing,  and  particularly  of  industrial  drawing." 

ELEMENTARY  COURSE. — Manual  exercises  intended  to  give 
manual  dexterity.  —  Cutting  of  card-board  in  the  forms  of 
geometrical  solids.  —  Basket-work :  Union  of  splints  of  dif- 
ferent colors. — Moulding:  Reproduction  of  geometrical  solids 
and  of  very  simple  objects." 

INTERMEDIATE  COURSE.  —  Construction  of  objects  of  card- 
board covered  with  colored  drawings  and  with  colored  paper. 
—  Trinkets  of  wire :  lattice-work.  —  Combinations  of  wire 
and  wood :  Cages.  —  Moulding :  Simple  architectural  orna- 
ments.—  Notions  on  the  most  common  tools. 

HIGHER  COURSE.  —  Combined  exercises  of  drawing  and 
moulding ;  rough  drafts  of  objects  to  be  executed,  and  con- 
struction of  these  objects  according  to  the  sketches,  or  vice 
versa.  —  Study  of  the  principal  tools  employed  in  wood-work. 
Practical  graduated  exercises.  Planing  and  sawing  wood, 
simple  unions.  Boxes  nailed  or  put  together  without  nails. 
Wood-turning,  the  turning  of  very  simple  objects.  —  Study  of 
the  principal  tools  used  in  iron-work,  the  use  of  the  file, 
paring  or  finishing  of  rough  objects  from  the  forge  or  foundry." 

473.  BY  WHOM  THE  LESSONS  IN  MANUAL  INDUSTRY  OUGHT 
TO  BE  GIVEN.  —  In  the  actual  state  of  affairs,  the  elemeu- 


THE  OTHER  EXERCISES  OF  THE  SCHOOL.      437 

tary  lessons  in  manual  labor  in  the  common  school  are 
given  by  the  teacher.  In  the  higher  common  schools  resort 
is  most  often  made  to  outside  workmen  who  bring  to  the 
school  the  co-operation  of  a  thorough  experience  in  the 
trade  which  they  have  practiced  all  their  life.  The  ideal 
would  be,  however,  that  in  the  higher  common  school  the 
manual  labor,  like  the  school  exercises,  should  be  intrusted 
to  the  teachers  themselves ;  and  this  is  why  a  recent  order 
has  required  that  the  examination  for  a  higher  certificate 
should  include  an  obligatory  test  in  manual  labor. 

474.  ORDER  TO  BE  FOLLOWED. — During  the  first  years 
of  the  common  school,  the  child,  who  is  ignorant  of  every- 
thing, has  so  many  things  to  learn  that  it  is  only  with  dis- 
cretion that  we  must  impose  on  him  exercises,  in  manual 
labor,  but  in  the  higher  courses  we  should  become  more 
exacting. 

During  the  period  from  seven  to  ten  years  we  must  not 
require  a  great  display  of  physical  force ;  the  child  must 
be  exercised  only  in  slight  tasks  which  develop  his  manual 
dexterity.  Drawing,  cutting,  making  boxes  of  card-board, 
which  permit  him  to  obtain  objects  of  various  forms  and 
colors,  will  call  into  play  at  the  same  time  his  intelligence, 
his  attention,  and  his  versatility.  To  these  tasks  will  be 
added  the  making  of  little  pieces  of  basket-work  and  the 
construction  of  metallic  lattice-work,  making  necessary  the 
use  of  light  tools.  At  this  stage  the  purpose  should  be  to 
make  children  really  produce  objects  which  they  can  take 
home  and  exhibit  as  their  own  work.  Some  specimens 
marked  with  the  name  of  each  child  will  be  left  at  school 
and  will  form  parts  of  the  school  museum. 

During  the  period  from  ten  to  twelve  years  the  children 
should  be  familiarized  with  most  of  the  tools  used  in  wood- 
work, and  trained  to  use  the  lathe  and  initiated  to  the  hand- 
ling of  the  file. 


438  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

During  the  whole  period  of  school  life  the  practice  of 
moulding  will  serve  to  promote  the  skill  and  the  deftness 
of  the  hand. 

Of  course  this  professional  education  ought  to  be  kept 
within  wise  limits,  so  as  not  to  do  prejudice  to  the  ordinary 
studies.  The  school  ought  not  to  become  a  workshop ;  it 
ought  merely  to  prepare  for  the  different  manual  industries 
by  inspiring  the  taste  and  by  beginning  to  train  the  apti- 
tudes which  they  require. 

475.  THE  TEACHING  OP  AGRICULTURE. — The  most  of 
our  common  schools  are  rural  schools.  The  majority  of 
the  children  who  attend  them  are  to  become  field-laborers ; 
hence  the  particular  importance  of  lessons  in  agriculture. 

It  is  in  the  garden  of  the  school  that  these  lessons  ought 
at  first  to  be  given  ;  later  they  will  be  continued  in  excur- 
sions. They  will  not  constitute,  at  least  during  the  first 
years,  a  consecutive  and  didactic  course.  They  will  bear 
on  the  nature  of  the  soil,  upon  fertilizers,  upon  the  ordi- 
nary farm  tools,  and  upon  the  different  varieties  of  field- 
labor. 

In  the  higher  course,  the  purpose  will  be  to  give  to  these 
subjects  a  more  methodical  character ;  and  an  extension 
will  be  given  to  them  by  calling  the  attention  of  children 
to  domestic  animals  and  even  to  the  keeping  of  farm 
accounts. 

There  will  be  added  to  these  general  notions  exact  in- 
formation on  arboriculture  and  horticulture ;  upon  the 
principal  processes  for  the  multiplication  of  vegetables, 
and  on  the  most  important  methods  of  grafting.  Outside 
of  the  special  lessons,  it  will  be  easy  for  an  attentive 
teacher  to  give  to  his  instruction  a  rural  coloring  through 
the  choice  of  dictation  exercises,  problems,  and  reading 
lessons.  The  teaching  of  the  physical  and  the  natural 


THE  OTHER  EXERCISES  OF  THE  SCHOOL.      439 

sciences  is  particularly  adapted  to  this  purpose,  and  as 
often  as  possible  there  should  be  drawn  from  them  practical 
conclusions  which  pertain  to  rural  industry. 

476.  MILITARY  DRILL.  —  A  child  of  our  common  schools 
is  not  only  a  future  workman,  but  a  future  soldier.  The 
school  would  fall  short  of  its  mission,  which  is  to  prepare 
for  life,  for  complete  living,  if  it  did  not  devote  a  few  hours 
to  military  drill. 

"  The  most  of  our  country  conscripts  reach  the  regiment 
awkward,  ungainly,  heavy  in  body  and  sometimes  in  mind, 
without  carriage,  without  ever  having  had  a  sword  in  hand, 
and  too  often  without  ever  having  fired  a  gun.  For  two 
years  they  must  with  great  difficulty  be  taught  what  they 
might  have  learned  with  so  much  pleasure  while  they  were 
children ;  and  it  is  very  fortunate  if  the  drudgery,  the  pun- 
ishments, and  the  dry  theory  do  not  give  them  a  hatred  for 
the  military  vocation."  1 

Through  the  military  exercises  of  the  school  the  legislator 
will  be  permitted  to  shorten  the  period  of  actual  service  in 
the  regiment  without  compromising  the  national  strength. 
From  the  moment  of  joining  the  regiment  we  shall  have, 
not  ungainly  conscripts,  but  young  men  already  broken  to 
military  tactics,  and  capable  of  handling  a  gun  and  of  using 
it.  By  this  means  also  we  shall  repair  in  part  the  military 
reputation  of  the  French  nation,  which  precisely,  because  it 
loves  peace,  and  wishes  to  preserve  it,  ought  to  prepare  itself 
to  be,  in  the  day  of  danger,  a  people  of  citizen-soldiers. 

The  evolutions  of  these  school  battalions,  which  are  be- 
coming more  and  more  customary,  are  not,  then,  a  vain 
parade.  The  children,  who  take  great  pleasure  in  them,  are 
not  playing  soldier,  but  are  seriously  doing  a  serious  thing, 

*  Paul  Bert,  De  I'  Education  civique. 


440  PRACTICAL    PEDAGOGY. 

a  useful  and  patriotic  thing.     They  are  preparing  to  be  the 
defenders  of  the  country  and  of  the  Republic. 

477.  DRILL  IN  SHOOTING.  —  The  official  programme  is 
right  in  requiring  not  only  drill  in  marching,  counter- 
marching, alignment,  etc.,  but  also  in  imposing  preparatory 
drill  in  shooting  and  a  practical  study  of  the  mechanism  of 
the  gun. 

On  leaving  school,  and  during  the  interval  between  the 
thirteenth  and  twenty-first  year,  the  child  should  become 
a  member  of  the  shooting  societies  which  are  established 
almost  everywhere  in  the  country,  and  which  are  called  to 
render  important  services.  But  this  cannot  be  unless  in  the 
school  itself  he  has  received  an  adequate  preparation.  But 
the  military  drill  should  not  encroach  on  the  hours  devoted 
to  study ;  and  the  order  of  1882  wisely  directs  that  the 
battalion  drill  shall  take  place  only  on  Thursday  and  Sunday, 
the  time  to  be  devoted  to  the  purpose  to  be  determined  by 
the  military  instructor  in  concert  with  the  director  of  the 
school. 

478.  OTHER  PRACTICAL   EXERCISES.  —  It  is  not  only  the 
natural  and  physical  sciences  which  lead  to  practical  appli- 
cations.    Geometry  also  leads  the    pupils  of  the  common 
school  to  the  simpler  operation  of  surveying  and  leveling ; 
and  arithmetic  conducts  them  to  an  apprenticeship  in  book- 
keeping. „ 

In  general,  a  practical  turn  must  be  given  to  each  branch 
of  study,  and  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  instruction  is 
an  apprenticeship  in  real  life. 

479.  MANUAL  INDUSTRIES  IN  SCHOOLS  FOR  GIRLS. — It  is 
especially  in  the  manual  industries  that  the  distinction  of  the 
sexes  ought  to  occasion  noticeable  differences  in  procedure. 
On  this  subject  the  programme  of  1882  speaks  as  follows : 


THE  OTHER  EXERCISES  OF  THE  SCHOOL-      441 

"  The  manual  labor  for  girls,  besides  the  work  in  cutting  and 
sewing,  allows  a  certain  number  of  lessons,  conferences,  and 
exercises,  by  means  of  which  the  mistress  will  attempt,  not  to 
give  a  regular  course  in  domestic  economy,  but  to  inspire 
young  women,  through  a  great  number  of  practical  examples, 
with  a  love  of  order;  to  make  them  acquire  the  substantial 
qualities  of  the  housewife ;  and  to  put  them  on  guard  against 
frivolous  and  dangerous  inclinations." 

480.  NEEDLE-WORK.  —  Even  in  the  maternal  school,  after 
having  been  initiated  into  the  little  kindergarten  exercises 
(weaving,  folding,  plaiting),  the  little  girl  will  be  trained 
in  little  tasks  of  knitting. 

The  weaving  consists  in  doing  wit)h  a  warp  and  woof  of 
paper  a  work  analogous  to  that  of  a  weaver. 

The  folding  consists  in  giving  different  forms  to  a  square 
piece  of  paper. 

481.  DOMESTIC  SEWING. — Doubtless  we  must  not  over- 
look the  exercises  in  embroidery,  tapestry,  lace-making,  fine 
sewing,  and  fancy  work,  which  are  carried  on    in  a  great 
number  of  schools ;  but  what  is  even  more  important,  and 
what  should  be  encouraged  above  all  else,  is  work  of  current 
use,  simple,  ordinary  work,  which  gives  proof  of  a  wholly 
practical  purpose,  and  which  does  not  aim  at  passing  beyond 
the  requirements  of  ordinary  domestic  needs.     A  single  word 
is  sufficient  to  characterize  what  the  sewing  in  the  common 
school  ought  to  be:  "Domestic  Sewing."    Official  instruc- 
tions have  often  been  given  that  no  work  in  sewing  shall  be 
done  in  the  school  which  is  not  required  for  household  use 
in  particular. 

Let  us  add  that  it  is  less  important  to  have  the  child  pro- 
duce fine  pieces  of  work  at  once,  than  to  put  her  in  a 
condition  to  use  her  fingers  with  agility  and  skill  in  her 


442  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

future  work.  M.  Greard  thinks  that  some  entertaining 
reading  ought  to  take  place  while  the  pupils  are  devoting 
themselves  to  manual  labor.  He  demands  besides  that  we 
distinguish  the  labor  of  the  workshop,  which  employs 
children  rather  than  trains  them, — the  "workshop"  de- 
riving advantage  from  its  products,  and  the  products  being 
as  much  more  valuable  as  the  same  operations  are  always 
intrusted  to  the  same  hands  which  have  here  acquired  a 
marvelous  dexterity,  —  from  the  teaching  of  the  school, 
which  requires  all  its  pupils  to  pass  through  the  progressive 
series  of  all  the  useful  exercises. 

482.  ABUSES  OF  MANUAL  LABOR.  —  For  our  part  we 
cannot  consent  to  quote  as  models  to  be  followed  the 
schools  where  the  teacher  has  her  pupils  do  work  in  sewing 
which  she  sells  at  the  ordinary  price,  and  then  divides  the 
proceeds  among  the  children.1  This  spirit  of  gain  and 
these  commercial  habits  are  not  in  keeping  in  a  school. 

From  this  point  of  view,  Madame  Pape-Carpantier  has 
vigorously  denounced  the  abuse  of  manual  labor  in  the  case 
of  children. 

"  No ;  the  child  cannot  fairly  become  a  producer,  —  that  is  to 
say,  have  something  to  dispose  of,  except  after  having  previ- 
ously acquired  all  that  he  needs  within  himself  and  for  him- 
self. Does  the  silk-worm  spin  before  having  been  nourished 
on  the  leaves  whence  she  draws  her  precious  web?  Must  not 
the  child,  like  the  earth,  be  cultivated  before  producing?  And 
what  can  a  child  produce  at  an  age  when  everything  in  him 
is  frail,  tender,  and  still  filled  with  maternal  milk?  I  have 
been  told  what  he  produces :  '  A  few  cents  a  day.'  A  few 
cents !  Is  such  a  revenue  indispensable  ?  And  how  is  the 
child  made  to  produce  such  a  wretched  pittance?  By  making 
him  perform  the  function  of  a  low-priced  instrument ;  by  con- 

1  See  M.  Vincent,  Cours  de  pedagogic,  p.  270. 


THE   OTHER   EXERCISES   OF   THE   SCHOOL.  443 

straining  his  young  turbulence  to  exercise  only  certain  muscles; 
to  execute  only  such  movements  as  he  will  have  to  repeat  every 
day  of  his  life;  by  developing  to  excess  in  him  the  force 
which  is  needed  by  his  trade,  to  the  detriment  of  those  which 
he  has  no  occasion  for ;  and  finally,  by  breaking  without  scruple, 
in  those  young  organizations,  that  equilibrium,  that  balance  of 
forces,  which  is  the  very  power  and  the  most  admirable  mani- 
festation of  God  in  the  universe." 

483.  DOMESTIC  ECONOMY.  —  Sewing  is  not  the  only  occu- 
pation of  the  household  now,  consequently  not  the  only  item 
in  the  school  apprenticeship  of  girls,  with  respect  to  manual 
labor.  Ideas  on  domestic  economy  in  general,  with  the 
practical  exercise  connected  with  them,  ought  also  to  form 
a  part  of  their  elementary  instruction. 

"  Why  is  not  the  common  school  which  receives  the  daughter 
of  the  laborer  practical  enough  to  descend  to  the  teaching,  appar- 
ently so  undignified,  but  so  fruitful  in  hygienic  and  even  in  moral 
results,  of  the  cost  of  alimentation  or  of  cooking,  if  we  must 
call  it  by  its  proper  name  ?  " 

By  way  of  illustration,  here  is  the  programme  followed  in 
the  schools  of  Belgium,  for  instruction  in  domestic  economy  : 

1.  Conditions    necessary   for   a   healthy    home.     Ventilation. 
Cleanliness. 

2.  Furniture   and   its  care. 

3.  Warming  and  lighting. 

4.  Washing.     The  use  of   soap  and  of   liquid   chlorides.     Re- 
moval of  grease. 

5.  Care  of  linen,  bed-clothing,  and  garments. 

6.  Practical   suggestions  as  to  alimentation,  quality  of  foods, 
and  their  preservation. 

7.  General  instruction  as  to  culinary  preparation. 

8.  Drinks. 

i  F.  Cadet. 


444  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

9.  Kitchen  closets. 

10.  Toilet  of  young  people. 

11.  Family  receipts  and  expenses. 

In  a  programme  so  extended  there  are  doubtless  some 
unnecessary  items ;  but  in  a  general  way,  instruction  in 
domestic  economy  ought  to  bear  on  these  different  subjects. 

484.  CONCLUSION. — We  have  now  reached  the  limit  of 
our  studies  on  the  different  parts  of  the  programme  for  the 
common  schools.  In  order  to  sum  up  their  general  spirit  we 
cannot  do  better  than  reproduce  in  this  place  one  or  two 
pages  from  M.  Greard. 

"  If  such  is  the  aim  of  common-school  instruction,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  its  value  depends  mainly  upon  its  method,  and  the 
method  which  is  best  adapted  to  it  may  be  described  in  a  few 
words. 

"Shun  all  written  tasks  which  give  a  false  direction  to  in- 
struction on  the  pretense  of  raising  its  character,  such  as  com- 
plicated and  curious  specimens  of  penmanship,  inordinate 
transcripts  of  lectures,  written  tables  of  analyses  and  conjuga- 
tions, definitions  that  are  not  understood ;  be  sparing  in  pre- 
cepts, but  multiply  examples ;  never  forget  that  the  best  book 
for  the  child  is  the  speaking  voice  of  the  teacher;  use  his 
memory,  so  supple  and  sure,  only  as  a  point  of  support,  and 
proceed  in  such  a  way  that  your  instruction  penetrate  to  his 
intelligence,  which  can  alone  preserve  its  fruitful  impress ;  lead 
the  pupil  from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  from  the  easy  to 
the  difficult,  from  the  application  to  the  principle ;  conduct 
him  by  well-connected  questions  to  discover  what  you  wish  to 
show  him ;  habituate  him  to  reason,  make  him  discover,  make 
him  see ;  —  in  a  word,  keep  his  reason  incessantly  in  motion, 
his  intelligence  on  the  alert.  For  this  purpose  leave  nothing 
obscure  which  deserves  explanation,  push  demonstrations  even 

1  M.  Greard,  L' Instruction  primaire  a  Paris  de  1872. 


THE  OTHER  EXERCISES  OF  THE  SCHOOL.     445 

to  the  material  representation  of  things  whenever  it  is  pos- 
sible; in  each  subject  disengage  from  the  confused  facts 
which  encumber  the  intelligence  the  characteristic  facts  and 
the  simple  rules  which  illumine  it;  in  every  subject  wind 
up  with  judicious  applications,  useful  or  moral ;  in  reading, 
for  example,  draw  from  the  selection  read  all  the  instructive 
explanations,  and  all  the  advice  bearing  on  conduct  which 
it  permits ;  in  grammar,  start  from  the  example  in  order  to 
reach  the  rule  divested  of  the  subtilties  of  grammatical 
scholastics ;  choose  the  texts  for  written  dictation  exercises 
from  among  the  simplest  and  purest  selections  in  classical 
works;  draw  the  subjects  of  oral  exercises,  not  from  col- 
lections constructed  at  pleasure  to  complicate  the  difficulties 
of  language,  but  from  matters  of  current  interest,  from  an 
incident  in  the  school,  from  the  lessons  of  the  day,  from 
passages  in  sacred  history,  in  the  history  of  France,  or  in 
a  recent  lesson  in  geography ;  invent  examples  before  the 
eyes  of  the  pupil  to  sharpen  his  attention ;  let  him  invent 
them  himself  and  always  record  them  on  the  blackboard ; 
reduce  all  arithmetical  operations  to  practical  exercises  bor- 
rowed from  the  usages  of  life ;  teach  geography  only  from 
the  map  by  gradually  extending  the  child's  horizon  from  the 
street  to  the  quarter,  from  the  quarter  to  the  commune,  to 
the  canton,  to  the  department,  to  France,  to  the  world ;  ani- 
mate the  topographical  description  of  places  by  picturing  the 
peculiarities  of  configuration  which  they  present,  by  explain- 
ing the  natural  and  industrial  productions  which  are  peculiar 
to  them,  and  by  recalling  the  events  which  remind  us  of 
them ;  in  history  give  to  the  different  epochs  an  attention  cor- 
responding with  their  relative  importance,  and  traverse  the 
first  centuries  more  rapidly  in  order  to  dwell  on  those  which 
are  more  directly  related  to  us ;  sacrifice  without  scruple 
details  of  pure  erudition  in  order  to  throw  into  relief  the 
broad  lines  of  national  development ;  look  for  the  sequel  of 
this  development,  less  in  the  succession  of  wars  than  in  the 
rational  concatenation  of  institutions,  in  the  progress  of  social 
ideas,  in  the  conquests  of  the  mind  which  are  the  true  con- 
quests of  Christian  civilization ;  place  before  the  child's  eyes 


446  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

men  and  things  through  paintings  which  enlarge  his  imagi- 
nation and  elevate  his  soul;  make  of  France  what  Pascal 
said  of  humanity,  a  grand  being  who  subsists  perpetually,  and 
by  this  means  give  the  child  an  idea  of  his  country,  of  the 
duties  which  she  imposes,  of  the  sacrifices  which  she  requires. 
Such  ought  to  be  the  spirit  of  the  lessons  of  the  school." 


CHAPTER  XL 

REWARDS    AND   PUNISHMENTS. 

485.  SCHOOL    DISCIPLINE.  — Discipline   is   that   part  of 
education  which,  on  the  one  hand,  immediately  assures  the 
industry  of  pupils  by  maintaining  good  order  in  the  school 
and  exciting    their  zeal,    and    which,  on    the    other   hand, 
working  for  a  more  remote  and  higher  purpose,  prevents  or 
represses  irregularities  of  conduct  aud  tends  to  train  resolute 
wills   and  energetic  characters  capable  of  self-control.      It 
has  the  double  purpose  of  establishing  the  actual  government 
of  the   school  and  of  teaching  pupils  to  govern  themselves 
when  they  shall  have  left  the  school  and  escaped  the  tutelage 
of  their  masters. 

486.  MEANS  OF  DISCIPLINE. — The  means  of  discipline  are 
as  various  as  the  instincts  of  human  nature.     Children  may 
be  led  by  very  different  mobiles,  which  are  connected  with 
three  or   four   principal   groups:  1.  The  personal  feelings, 
as  fear,  pleasure,  and  self-love ;  2.  The  affectionate  senti- 
ments, as  the  love  of  parents  and  affection  for  the  teacher ; 
3.   Reflective  interest,  such  as  the  fear  of  punishment   and 
the  hope  of  reward  ;  4.  The  idea  of  duty. 

To  tell  the  truth,  none  of  these  principles  ought  to  be  ex- 
cluded from  the  internal  government  of  schools.  It  would 
be  unwise  to  forego  the  precious  resources  which  each  of 
these  mobiles  furnishes  the  teacher  for  securing  silence, 
order,  and  attention,  for  encouraging  ardor  in  toil,  for  cor- 

447 


448  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

recting  the  faults  and  developing  the  good  qualities  of  his 
pupils.  Doubtless  the  ideal  would  be  that  the  child,  con- 
scious of  his  interest  and  comprehending  his  duty,  should 
work  and  obey  through  a  disinterested  act  of  his  own  will ; 
but  the  nature  of  the  child  does  not  yield  to  this  pure 
regime  of  a  liberty  enlightened  and  truly  mistress  of  itself. 
Even  the  mature  man  is  not  always  capable  of  self -direction 
through  the  idea  of  right  alone  ;  he  needs  the  stimulants  of 
emulation,  the  solicitation  of  pleasures,  and  the  salutary 
fear  of  the  laws.  Then  do  not  require  of  the  child  an  effort 
which  surpasses  his  powers,  but  in  order  to  discipline  him, 
appeal  in  turn  to  the  different  inclinations  of  his  soul. 

Means  of  discipline  consist  precisely  in  acting  on  these  in- 
clinations ;  they  call  into  play  the  springs  of  activity.  The 
best  are  those  which  interest  the  greatest  number  of  feelings 
at  the  same  time,  and  which  are  supported  by  the  greatest 
number  of  ideas.  There  could  be  nothing  worse  than  a 
system  of  exclusive  discipline  which  tended  to  develop  but 
a  single  emotion,  as  fear,  or  self-love,  or  affection  itself. 

487.  EMULATION.  — Of  all  the  principles  of  action  which 
make  scholars  studious  and  classes  orderly,  there  is  none 
more  powerful  than  emulation.     It  is  to  emulation  that  is  due 
the  efficacy  of  rewards,  and  it  is  emulation  above  all  which 
animates  the  school  and  gives  it  the  spirit  of  industry.     As 
a  disciplinary  motive,  emulation  owes  its  superiority  mainly 
to  its  complex  character  and  to  the  multiplicity  of  the  feel- 
ings which  it  puts  in  train. 

488.  DEFINITION    OF    EMULATION.  — Emulation,    like    all 
the  feelings  of  the  soul,  is  a  thing  difficult  to  define .     There 
enter  into  it  different  elements  which  disturb  its  simplicity, 
the  analysis  of  which  is  difficult.     Emulation  is  above  all  a 
personal  feeling   based  on   self-love.      It   might  be  defined 


REWARDS   AND   PUNISHMENTS.  449 

self-love  in  act,  which  is  not  satisfied  with  the  advantages  it 
already  has,  but  wishes  to  acquire  new  ones.  By  its  nature  it 
resembles  ambition  or  the  desire  for  glory  ;  but  it  is  an  ambi- 
tion which  has  reference  to  others,  which  is  a  rival  with 
concurrent  ambitions,  which  aspires  to  success,  not  for  the 
success  itself,  but  for  the  purpose  of  surpassing  others. 

489.  THE  DIFFERENT  ELEMENTS  OF  EMULATION. — 
Certain  educators  are  wrong  in  confounding  emulation  with 
the  instinct  of  imitation.  Doubtless  the  emulous  man  the  more 
often  imitates  his  rivals ;  but  often  he  also  wishes  to  do 
differently  from  them  for  the  purpose  of  doing  better.  We 
do  not  deny  that  imitation  plays  an  important  part  in 
emulation ;  but  it  does  not  constitute  the  basis  of  it,  and  is 
but  one  of  the  means  which  emulation  employs  to  reach  its 
ends. 

Although  composed  chiefly  of  self-love,  emulation  is  still 
not  a  desire  exclusively  personal  and  selfish.  When  it  is  what 
it  ought  to  be,  a  noble  and  spirited  sentiment,  there  is  always 
mingled  with  it  a  secret  aspiration  towards  what  is  good, 
something  of  a  pure  love  of  perfection.  Of  course  the 
emulous  man  wishes  above  all  else  to  equal  or  surpass  his 
competitors,  but  he  also  pursues  an  ideal.  In  every  case  the 
duty  of  the  teacher  ought  to  be  to  develop  emulation  in  this 
direction,  by  diverting  it  from  its  selfish  tendencies,  in  order 
to  direct  it  towards  the  pursuit  of  the  good. 

Diderot  clearly  defined  the  double  nature  of  emulation, 
without  neglecting  to  throw  into  relief  the  predominance  of 
self-love,  when  he  said  : 1 

"Emulation  is  not  exactly  the  desire  to  do  the  best  that  is 
possible, — that  would  be  a  pure  virtue;  but  it  is  the  desire 
to  do  better  than  others,  which  approaches  vanity.  Notwith- 

1  See  especially  the  article  Emulation,  in  the  Dictionnaire  dc  pe'dayogie. 


450  PRACTICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

standing  this  defective  side,  it  is  none  the  less  the  source  of 
the  most  beautiful  things  in  society.  Superiority  is  a  general 
inclination.  The  most  active  pleasure  is  that  of  glory;  the 
thing  is  to  present  to  it  estimable  objects;  and  self-love  will 
always  be  the  greatest  resource  in  a  civilized  land." 

490.  EMULATION  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  PEDAGOGY.  —  In 
all  times  emulation  has  been  known  and  commended  as  one 
of  the  essential  means  of  discipline.  At  Sparta  it  may  be 
said  that  emulation  was  pushed  even  to  fanaticism  ;  prefer- 
ence was  given  to  him  who  was  the  most  courageous,  the 
most  temperate,  the  most  insensible  to  pain.  At  Athens 
how  emulous  was  Themistocles,  whose  sleep  was  troubled 
by  the  laurels  of  Miltiades !  Rabelais  said  of  his  model 
preceptor,  that  he  introduced  Gargantua  to  a  company  of 
learned  men,  "  to  emulate  whom  inspired  him  with  the  spirit 
and  the  desire  to  do  valiantly."  It  is  well  known  that 
Bossuet,  in  order  to  counteract  the  indolence  of  the  Dau- 
phin, made  him  compete  with  the  children  of  his  own 
age.  "Emulation,"  says  Fenelon,  "is  a  spur  to  virtue." 
According  to  Locke,  all  is  done,  everything  is  gained, 
when  we  have  stirred  the  pupil's  spirit  of  emulation ! 
Rousseau,  who  isolates  Emile  and  allows  him  no  compan- 
ions, wishes  at  least  that  his  pupil  should  find  a  rival  in 
himself,  and  so  invents  a  sort  of  personal  emulation.  And 
in  an  article  in  the  Encyclopaedia  he  wrote  as  follows : 
"Emulation  is  a  disposition  dangerous  to  the  truth,  but 
education  can  transform  it  into  a  sublime  virtue."  Rollin 
would  have  us  appeal  to  the  reason  of  children,  stimulate 
the  sense  of  honor,  and  make  use  of  praise,  rewards, 
and  caresses. 

1  "  There  is,"  says  M.  Feuillet,  "  in  solitary  education  a  species  of 
emulation,  or  rather  an  image  of  emulation,  which  is  the  result  of 
the  comparison  which  one  is  led  to  make  of  himself  with  himself ; 
and  hence  arises  the  desire  to  surpass  one's  self." 


REWARDS   AND   PUNISHMENTS.  451 

"  Children,"  he  says,  "  are  sensible  to  praise.  We  must  take 
advantage  of  this  weakness,  and  try  to  make  a  virtue  of  it. 
We  should  run  the  risk  of  discouraging  them,  if  we  never 
praised  them  when  they  did  well.  Though  praise  is  to  be  feared 
on  the  score  of  vanity,  we  must  try  to  make  use  of  it  to  ani- 
mate children  without  enervating  them.  For  of  all  the  motives 
adapted  to  touch  a  reasonable  soul,  there  are  none  more  pow- 
erful than  honor  and  shame;  and  when  children  have  been 
made  sensible  to  them,  all  has  been  gained.'' 

Madame  Campan  declared  that  "emulation  constituted 
the  strength  of  public  education."  It  there  reigns  over 
young  minds,  directs  them  toward  the  good,  and  does  no 
harm  to  the  generous  sentiments  of  the  heart  and  soul. 

491.  EMULATION  IN  A  DEMOCRACY.  —  It  is  useless  to  pro- 
long this  historical  review,  for  it  would  almost  always  lead 
to  the  same  result,  a  more  or  less  complete  approval  of  the 
use  of  emulation  in  discipline.  Let  us  merely  add,  that 
in  a  democratic  society  like  our  own,  at  a  time  when  it  is 
necessary  to  summon  millions  of  children  to  exertion, 
emulation  becomes  more  and  more  important.  This  has 
been  forcibly  expressed  by  M.  Feuillet. 

"  Emulation  was  formerly  but  the  worst  species  of  ambition ; 
its  purpose  was  to  reach  the  highest  places  to  which  only  a 
small  number  of  subjects  could  have  access.  In  this  way  em- 
ulation was  concentrated  instead  of  being  extended.  ...  It 
ought  to  be  otherwise  in  a  republic.  ...  It  is  felt  that  the 
main  purpose  of  education  can  no  longer  be  to  obtain  a 
small  number  of  exceptional  but  superior  men,  but  that  its 
essential  purpose  is  to  train  that  immense  majority  of  good, 
wise,  and  useful  citizens  who,  in  all  the  places  where  circum- 
stances have  carried  them,  unite  to  form  what  is  called  the 
state.  The  methods  of  education  then  necessarily  change 
with  its  purpose.  Emulation  is  diffused,  so  to  speak,  so  as 
to  embrace  all  ranks  and  to  bring  all  individuals  under  its 
influence." 


452  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

And  Feuillec  concludes  as  follows  : 

"Equality,  and  by  a  necessary  consequence  reciprocal  depend- 
ence  and  general  emulation,  are  the  conditions  to  which  the 
happiness  of  men  is  invariably  attached  in  all  the  circum- 
stances composing  the  state  of  society;  and  consequently 
these  are  the  conditions  which  ought  to  be  provided  for  by 
the  education  that  is  alone  good  and  true,  that  which  trains 
citizens." 1 

492.  ERROR  OF  THOSE  WHO  CONDEMN  EMULATION.  —  The 
educators  who  condemn  emulation  deceive  themselves  on 
two  points.  On  the  one  hand  they  have  too  great  a  dis- 
trust of  human  nature ;  in  their  eyes  the  feeling  of  self- 
love  is  like  a  poisonous  stock  which  can  bear  only  evil  fruit ; 
they  think  that  to  favor  emulation  is  by  a  necessary  con- 
sequence surely  to  engender  envy,  jealous  rivalry,  and 
malevolence. 

We  must  reply  to  them,  with  La  Bruyere,  "  that,  whatever 
connection  there  may  seem  to  be  between  jealousy  and 
emulation,  there  is  between  them  the  same  distance  that  is 
found  between  vice  and  virtue.  Emulation  is  an  energetic, 
courageous  sentiment,  which  renders  the  soul  fruitful,  makes 
it  profit  by  great  examples,  and  often  carries  it  above  that 
which  it  admires." 

On  the  other  hand,  by  a  contrary  illusion  to  forego  the 
aid  of  emulation  is  to  count  too  much  on  the  powers  of  the 
human  soul,  and  to  believe  that  the  child  can  be  excited  to 
exertion  by  purely  disinterested  motives,  by  the  simple  idea 
of  the  duty  to  be  performed,  without  the  need  of  calling  into 
play  his  personal  instincts.  This  is  to  forget  what  Pascal 
said : 

"  The  children  of  Port  Royal  are  falling  into  indifference 
through  default  of  ambition." 

1  M.  Feuillet,  Mcmoire  sur  I'emulation,  crowned  by  the  Institute  in 
1801. 


REWARDS   AND   PUNISHMENTS.  453 

493.  ROCKS  TO  SHUN.  —  The  educators  who  exclude  emu- 
lation have  pointed   out   the  rocks  on  which  we  are   liable 
accidentally  to  fall  when  we  make  a  bad  use  of  it,  but  have 
not  been  so  successful  in  discovering  the  irremediable  dangers 
to   which   all   those  who  employ  it  are  inevitably  exposed. 

The  charges  they  bring  against  emulation  are  the  follow- 
ing :  "  1.  The  attention  of  children  is  turned  aside  from  the 
thought  of  duty  and  is  fixed  on  the  reward.  2.  Children 
are  made  to  honor  success  rather  than  merit.  3.  The  vanity 
of  some  is  unduly  excited,  while  the  others  are  forever 
humiliated  and  discouraged.  4.  Hatred  and  jealousy  among 
companions  is  provoked.  5.  There  is  contracted  for  life  the 
detestable  habit  of  seeking  for  distinction,  of  striving  for  the 
highest  place,  of  seeking  honors,  and  of  not  being  contented 
with  a  modest  position  and  an  obscure  tranquillity." 

As  a  fact,  these  disadvantages  may  result  from  emulation, 
badly  conceived  and  directed ;  but  they  will  be  shunned  with- 
out much  difficulty  by  a  skillful  teacher,  who  will  take  care 
not  to  materialize  emulation,  not  to  take  account  merely  of 
the  material  qualities  of  his  pupils,  who  will  not  make  a 
misuse  of  artificial  rewards,  who  will  know  how  to  reassure 
the  conquered  and  prevent  them  from  feeling  too  keenly  the 
bitterness  of  their  defeat,  at  the  same  time  that  he  will  recall 
the  conquerors  to  a  sense  of  modesty ;  who,  in  a  word,  will 
not  give  too  great  attention  to  the  spring  of  emulation,  and 
will  not  allow  it  to  fall  into  the  dangerous  over-excitement  of 
ambition. 

494.  REWARDS.  —  When  we  admit  emulation  as  a  principle 
of  discipline  we  at  the  same  time  admit  rewards.     In  fact, 
rewards  are  the  best  means  of  vivifying  and  animating  the 
feeling  of  emulation.     However  desirous  we  may  be  that  the 
child  shall  actually  find  the  best  of  rewards  in  the  feeling  of 
a  duty  done  or  in  the  consciousness  of  his  progress,  it  would 


454  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

be  folly  to  deprive  ourselves  of  the  aid  which  might  come  to 
discipline  from  rewards  skillfully  chosen  and  discreetly  dis- 
tributed. 

495.  DIFFERENT  SPECIES  OF  REWARDS.  —  But  there    are 
rewards  and   rewards.     They   vary  especially  according  to 
the  nature  of  the  feelings  which  they  aim  at  and  which  they 
affect  in  the  child.     For  example,  they  are  sometimes  ad- 
dressed only  to  the  affectionate  sentiments,  as  endearments  ; 
or  they  flatter  self-love  and  the  desire  of  approbation,  like 
praise  ;  or  they  respond  only  to  the  lower  tastes  of  the  sensi- 
bility, like  dainties ;  or,  finally,  they  awaken  the  selfish  in- 
stincts, like  prizes.     Let  us  add  that  these  different  elements 
may  be  confounded  in  the  rewards  that  are  given,  and  that  in 
order  to  estimate  their  educative  value  it  is  necessary  to  take 
a  strict   account  of  the  character  of  the  different    feelings 
which  they  excite. 

496.  SENSIBLE  REWARDS.  —  "We  must  absolutely  proscribe 
purely  material  rewards,  which  are  not  permissible  save  with 
very  young  children,  who  may  be  influenced  by  the  allure- 
ment of  sweetmeats.     As  soon  as  possible  the  child  ought 
to  be  accustomed  to  seek  the  reward  of  his  toil  and  his 
efforts  in  the  satisfaction  of  his  higher  inclinations. 

497.  PRAISE  AND  COMMENDATION.  —  "  The  best  rewards," 
says  M.  Rendu,  "  are  those  which,  divested  of  material  value, 
call  into  play  the  delicate  sentiments  without  exciting  any 
idea  of  personal  interest."     Of  this  sort  are  the  words  of 
approbation  and  the  commendation  of  the  teacher.     They 
excite  the  feeling  of  honor.  They  are,  moreover,  as  much  the 
more  efficacious  as  the  teacher  has  been  able  to  make  himself 
loved  and  respected  by  his  pupils.     In  a  school  where  the 
teacher's  authority  is  firmly  established,  aad  where  the  pupils 


REWAKDS   AND   PUNISHMENTS.  455 

have  self-love,  the  rewards  may  be  reduced  to  commen- 
dations. But  care  must  be  taken  to  employ  this  means  only 
with  caution,  for  fear  of  exciting  pride  and  vanity. 

"  The  schoolmaster's  means  of  reward  is  chiefly  confined 
to  approbation  or  praise,  a  great  and  flexible  instrument,  yet 
needing  delicate  manipulation.  Some  kinds  of  merit  are  so 
palpable  as  to  be  described  by  numerical  marks.  Equal,  in 
point  of  distinctness,  is  the  fact  that  a  thing  is  right  or  wrong, 
in  part  or  in  whole ;  it  is  sufficient  approbation  to  pronounce 
that  a  question  is  correctly  answered,  a  passage  properly  ex- 
plained. This  is  the  praise  that  envy  cannot  assail.  Most 
unsafe  are  phrases  of  commendation ;  much  care  is  required  to 
make  them  both  discriminating  and  just.  They  need  to  have 
a  palpable  basis  in  facts.  Distinguished  merit  should  not  al- 
ways be  attended  with  paeans;  silent  recognition  is  the  rule, 
the  exceptions  must  be  such  as  to  extort  admiration  from  the 
most  jealous.  The  controlling  circumstance  is  the  presence  of 
the  collective  body ;  the  teacher  is  not  speaking  for  himself 
alone,  but  directing  the  sentiments  of  a  multitude,  with  which 
he  should  never  be  at  variance;  his  strictly  private  judgments 
should  be  privately  conveyed."  1 

498.  OTHER   REWARDS.  —  In   general,  rewards  ought   to 
be  but  the  exterior  signs  of  the  teacher's  approbation. 

Of  this  description  are  good  marks,  place  in  class  ac- 
cording to  records  of  recitations,  certificates  of  approval, 
inscription  on  the  roll  of  honor,  prizes.  Some  teachers  also 
recommend  medals  and  decorations. 

499.  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  PRIZES. — We  cannot  too  much 
encourage  the  custom,  recently  introduced  into  the  common 
schools,  of  formal  distribution  of  prizes. 

"  Many  common  schools,"  said  the  ministerial  circular  of 
1864,  "have  no  celebration  at  the  end  of  the  year,  where 


1  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  pp.  113.  114. 


456  PRACTICAL  PEDAGOGY. 

good  conduct  and  industry  are  publicly  rewarded.  The  result 
is  that  we  find  in  these  schools  but  little  emulation,  and 
that  a  part  of  the  pupils  desert  them  for  a  portion  of  the 
year.  It  were  well,  however,  that  each  village  should  have 
its  annual  celebration  for  children  and  their  work.  The  ex- 
pense involved  would  be  small,  and  if  this  could  not  be  met 
by  public  tax,  individuals,  I  am  sure,  would  think  it  an  honor 
to  bear  it.  It  will  not  be  difficult  for  you  to  persuade  the 
proper  officers  of  each  department  that  the  money  spent  on 
children  is,  from  every  point  of  view,  money  invested  at  a  high 
rate  of  interest." 

"  I  am  firm  in  the  belief,"  says  another  circular,  "  that 
this  custom  would  be  excellent,  on  the  express  condition  that 
the  prizes  shall  be  distributed  with  discretion,  so  as  to  be 
given  only  to  the  most  deserving  pupils." 

500.  PUNISHMENTS.  —  Punishments   are   based  on  almost 
the  same  principles  as  rewards.     Rewards  appeal  mainly  to 
the  feeling  of  honor  or  to  self-love.     Punishments  sometimes 
have  the  same  character, —  they  tend  to  humiliate  the  pupil, 
to  make   him   ashamed  of  his   faults   publicly  denounced. 
But  in  general  their  purpose  is  to  wound  the  sensibilities  of 
the  child  by  depriving  him  of  things  which  he  loves,  just  as 
rewards  excite  him  by  giving  him  what  pleases  him. 

501.  REPRIMANDS.  —  Just  as  praise  and  words  of  appro- 
bation are  the  best  and   the  most  convenient  of   rewards, 
so  reprimands,  censure,  and  tokens  of  disapproval  are  the 
promptest  and  the  surest  of  punishments ;   on  condition,  of 
course,  that  the  children  have  previously  been  made  sensitive 
to  shame,  and  that  they  love  and  esteem  their  teacher. 

The  very  fact  of  revealing  before  companions  a  fault  that 
has  been  committed,  and  that  the  culprit  cannot  deny,  is  in 
itself  an  effective  punishment.  There  will  be  added  to  this, 
when  the  nature  of  the  offence  requires  it,  words  of  censure 
which  will  make  the  pupil  blush. 


REWARDS   AND   PUNISHMENTS.  457 

The  thing  of  most  importance  in  the  use  of  reprimands 
and  censure  is,  first,  not  to  make  an  over-use  of  them. 
Teachers  who  are  always  scolding  finally  cease  to  be  heeded. 
If  the  reprimand  becomes  stale,  if  it  is  resorted  to  too 
frequently,  it  loses  all  its  effect.  In  the  second  place,  it 
must  be  exactly  proportioned  to  the  fault  which  it  points  out 
and  which  it  proposes  to  correct.  The  teacher  will  no 
longer  be  respected  if  he  does  not  exhibit  the  strictest  spirit 
of  justice  in  his  words.  Besides,  the  tone  of  the  repri- 
mand ought  always  to  be  moderate,  calm,  and  dignified.  If 
the  teacher  loses  his  temper,  his  anger,  as  Mr.  Bain  remarks, 
is  a  real  victory  for  the  bad  pupils,  even  when  it  has  inspired 
them  with  a  momentary  fear. 

"Never  correct  a  child,"  says  Fdnelon,  "either  in  the 
first  flush  of  his  anger  or  of  your  own.  If  in  yours,  he 
sees  that  you  are  acting  from  passion  or  from  impulse,  and 
not  from  reason  and  affection,  and  you  lose  your  authority 
without  recall.  If  in  his,  he  has  not  enough  liberty  of 
thought  to  acknowledge  his  fault,  to  conquer  his  passion,  and 
to  feel  the  importance  of  your  advice ;  it  is  even  exposing 
the  child  to  the  risk  of  losing  the  respect  lie  owes  you. 
Always  show  him  that  you  are  your  own  master ;  and 
nothing  will  better  make  him  see  this  than  your  patience." 

502.  THREATS.  —  Before  proceeding  to  actual  punishment 
it  is  wise  to  warn  the  child  of  the  consequences  that  will  fol- 
low a  repetition  of  his  fault.     He  must  not  be  summarily 
punished,  but  must  first  be  warned.    But  threats  ought  always 
to  be  followed  by  acts.      The  pupil  laughs  at  a  teacher 
who  never  goes  further  than  words,  who  never  executes  his 
threat 

503.  ACTUAL    PUNISHMENTS.  —  The    penal  code   of  the 
school  contains   many  articles,  especially  if  we  study  it  in 
the  ancient  systems  of  education ;  but  with  the  progress  in 
manners  it  has  been  gradually  moderated. 


458  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

In  the  maternal  schools  the  only  punishments  allowed  are 
the  following  :  "  Interdiction,  for  a  very  short  time,  of  study 
and  play  in  common ;  withdrawal  of  good  marks." 

In  the  common  schools  the  teacher  ought  to  make  use  of 
the  same  punishments, —  partial  loss  of  recreation,  keeping 
the  pupil  after  school,  suspension,  or  expulsion. 

Privation  of  recreation  ought  never  to  be  of  long  duration. 
On  the  pretext  of  punishing  the  child,  he  should  not  be 
denied  the  rest  and  play  which  are  as  necessary  for  his 
physical  health  as  for  his  intelligence. 

"  Detention  from  play,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "  or  keeping  in 
after  hours,  is  very  galling  to  the  young ;  and  it  ought  to 
suffice  for  even  serious  offences,  especially  for  riotous  and 
unruly  tendencies,  for  which  it  has  all  the  merits  of  '  char- 
acteristicalness.'  The  excess  of  activity  and  aggressiveness  is 
met  by  withholding  the  ordinary  legitimate  outlets."  l 

The  expulsion  of  the  pupil  is  evidently  an  extreme  remedy 
and  a  sort  of  confession  of  the  weakness  of  the  school  dis- 
cipline ;  but  the  fear  of  this  punishment,  if  it  has  overtaken 
incorrigible  pupils  in  one  or  two  cases,  is  a  very  effective 
example  for  all  the  others. 

504.  TASKS  OR  IMPOSITIONS.  —  A  great  abuse  was  for- 
merly made  of  pensums,  or  supplementary  tasks  ;  perhaps  it 
has  been  a  mistake  to  proscribe  them  absolutely. 

"Tasks  or  impositions,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "are  the  usual 
punishment  of  neglect  of  lessons,  and  are  also  employed  for 
rebelliousness:  the  pain  lies  in  the  intellectual  ennui,  which 
is  severe  to  those  that  have  no  liking  for  books  in  any 
shape.  They  also  possess  the  irksomeness  of  confinement 
and  fatigue-drill.  They  may  be  superadded  to  shame,  and 
the  combination  is  a  formidable  penalty."  2 

1  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  pp.  115, 116. 

2  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  p.  116. 


REWARDS   AND   PUNISHMENTS.  459 

505.  CORPORAL  PUNISHMENTS. — In  France  the  regula- 
tions, as  well  as  the  manners,  absolutely  condemn  the 
corporal  chastisements  which  for  so  many  centuries  were 
comprised  among  the  legitima  pcenarum  genera.  Even 
Pestalozzi,  the  good  and  mild  Pestalozzi,  used  and  abused 
this  mode  of  punishment,  and  had  their  use  sanctioned  by 
the  unanimous  consent  of  his  pupils.  In  England  public 
opinion  is  still  generally  favorable  to  corporal  punishment, 
and  it  is  sanctioned  by  Mr.  Bain. 

"  Where  corporal  punishment  is  kept  up,  it  should  be  at 
the  far  end  of  the  list  of  penalties;  its  slightest  application 
should  be  accounted  the  worst  disgrace,  and  should  be  ac- 
companied with  stigmatizing  forms.  It  should  be  regarded 
as  a  deep  injury  to  the  person  that  inflicts  it,  and  to  those 
that  have  to  witness  it,  as  the  height  of  shame  and  infamy. 
It  ought  not  to  be  repeated  with  the  same  pupil ;  if  two 
or  three  applications  are  not  enough,  removal  is  the  proper 
course."  * 

We  shall  not  enter  upon  this  casuistry  of  corporal  chastise- 
ments. They  must  be  absolutely  forbidden,  and  in  every 
case,  because,  as  Locke  says,  they  constitute  a  servile  dis- 
cipline which  renders  souls  servile. 

506.  GENERAL  RULES.  —  Whatever  may  be  the  punish- 
ment employed,  it  will  always  be  necessary  to  follow  some 
general  principles. 

First,  let  the  punishment  always  be  accommodated  to  the 
fault  committed,  and  also  to  the  sensibility  of  the  culprit. 
A  given  pupil  may  be  profoundly  affected  by  a  light  punish- 
ment which  will  leave  less  sensitive  pupils  absolutely 
unaffected. 

Punishment  should  not  be  employed  lavishly  ;  repetition 

1  Bain,  Education  as  a  Science,  pp.  116, 117. 


460  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

soon  destroys  its  efficacy,  and  there  is  nothing  good  to  be 
expected  of  a  child  hardened  by  punishment.  "  Carefully 
avoid  punishing  all  the  faults  of  your  girls,"  said  Madame  de 
Maintenon  ;  ' '  the  punishments  would  become  common,  and 
would  no  longer  produce  an  impression." 

Penalties  should  be  carefully  graduated.  "  It  is  a  rule  in 
punishment,"  says  Mr.  Bain,  "to  try  slight  penalties  at 
first.  With  the  better  natures  the  mere  idea  of  punishment 
is  enough ;  severity  is  entirely  unnecessary." 

Special  efforts  should  be  made  to  establish  in  the  child's 
mind  an  intimate  relation  between  the  penalty  and  the  wrong 
that  has  been  done.  For  this  purpose  the  punishment  should, 
so  far  as  possible,  be  connected  with  the  fault.  If  a  child 
has  told  a  falsehood  he  should  be  humiliated  by  no  longer 
believing  his  word ;  if  another  is  indiscreet,  confidence  is 
no  longer  placed  in  him ;  if  another  is  always  quarreling, 
let  him  be  shunned  by  his  companions.  In  this  way  the 
punishment  is  better  understood  and  is  more  effective,  be- 
cause it  seems  to  the  child  the  natural  consequence  of  his 
fault. 

507.  THE  DISCIPLINE  OF  CONSEQUENCES.  —  In  our  day 
Herbert  Spencer  has  popularized  the  system  which  consists 
in  suppressing  the  whole  machinery  of  artificial  punishments, 
in  order  to  leave  a  free  field  for  the  action  of  nature.  The 
purpose  is  to  make  the  child  feel  the  consequences  of  the 
acts  which  he  commits.  "What  more  striking  punishment 
than  these  very  consequences ! 

"All  the  punishments  of  human  invention  are  powerless. 
The  only  chastisements  truly  salutary  are  those  which  nature 
creates  on  the,  spot  and  applies.  No  threats,  but  a  silent  and 
rigorous  execution.  The  hot  coal  burns  him  who  touches  it 
the  first  time ;  it  burns  him  the  second,  a  third  time ;  it 
burns  him  every  time.  There  is  nothing  like  this  immediate, 


REWARDS   AND   1UMSHMENTS.  461 

direct,  inevitable  correction.  Observe  also  that  the  penalty  is 
always  in  proportion  to  the  violation  of  the  order  of  things, 
the  reaction  being  in  correspondence  with  the  action ;  and  that 
it  introduces  along  with  it  in  the  mind  of  the  child  the  idea 
of  justice,  the  chastisement  being  but  an  effect;  and  finally, 
that  there  is  no  effect  more  certain.  Universal  language  testi- 
fies to  this.  Experience  dearly  bought,  bitter  experience,  is  the 
great  lesson,  and  the  only  one  by  which  we  profit."  1 

508.  CRITICISM  OF  THIS  SYSTEM.  —  However  seductive 
this  doctrine  of  natural  reactions  may  at  first  appear,  it  is 
evident,  after  reflection,  that  it  could  not  suffice  to  consti- 
tute with  respect  to  the  correction  and  repression  of  faults, 
a  system  of  school  discipline.  For  a  certain  number  of 
cases  to  which  it  may  be  usefully  applied,  how  many  others 
there  are  where  it  would  be  absolutely  inefficient !  Let  us 
admit,  although  it  is  not  true,  that  every  fault,  every  viola- 
tion of  the  order  of  nature,  entails  by  a  natural  necessity 
a  painful  result  In  most  cases  this  will  be  but  a  remote 
consequence  on  long  credit ;  and  the  culprit  will  be  able  to 
repeat  his  faults  thousands  of  times  before  the  punishment 
flashes  upon  him.  School  delinquencies  are  for  the  most 
part  of  such  a  nature  that  the  child  has  not  to  suffer  imme- 
diately for  being  allowed  to  have  his  own  way.  Lack  of 
application  and  indolence  will  compromise  the  entire  life  of 
a  negligent  scholar.  Having  become  a  man,  he  will  repent 
at  the  age  of  thirty  in  an  idle  existence  which  he  will  be 
unable  to  employ  to  any  good  purpose,  for  having  been  an 
inattentive  and  an  irregular  pupil.  But  when  he  perceives 
the  consequences  of  his  indolence,  it  will  be  too  late,  —  the 
evil  will  have  been  done.  The  punishment  will  doubtless  be 
striking,  pitiless,  justly  deserved.  The  culprit  will  be  obliged 

1  We  borrow  this  analysis  of  Mr.  Spencer's  opinion  from  M.  Grc 
ard's  Memoir  sur  I'  Esprit  de  discipline  dans  I'  education. 


462  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

to  bow  before  it,  as  before  an  inexorable  but  just  fate.  But 
the  purpose  of  punishments  is  even  more  to  prevent  wrong 
and  to  correct  it  in  time,  than  to  cause  expiation  for  it  in 
an  exemplary  way. 

509.  OTHER  CRITICISMS.  —  It  would  be  easy  to  show  that, 
from  still  other  points  of  view,  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  is  not  in 
accord  with  the  ideal  punishment. 

"  The  pain  produced  by  natural  consequences,"  says  M.  Gre- 
ard,  "is  most  often  enormous  with  respect  to  the  fault  which 
has  produced  them ;  and  man  himself  claims  for  'his  conduct 
other  penalties  than  those  of  a  hard  reality.  He  would  have  us 
judge  the  intention  as  well  as  the  fact;  he  would  have  us  give 
him  credit  for  his  efforts;  and  would  have  us  punish  him,  if 
need  be,  but  without  destroying  him,  and  while  reaching  out  a 
hand  to  lift  him  up." 

In  a  word,  there  is  nothing  more  brutal,  more  inhuman, 
ohan  the  system  which,  suppressing  all  human  intervention 
of  the  teacher  in  the  correction  of  the  child,  leaves  to  nature 
alone  the  task  of  chastising  him.  Slow  in  certain  cases,  the 
justice  of  nature  is  often  violent  and  murderous.  Let  us  add, 
finally,  that  the  system  of  natural  consequences  suppresses 
moral  ideas, — the  idea  of  obligation  and  duty.  It  con- 
fronts the  child  only  with  the  blind  and  unconscious  forces  of 
necessity.  And  so  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  hold  to  his  theory 
to  the  end,  but  to  the  reactions  of  nature  he  adds  the  re- 
actions of  the  feelings  which  manifest  themselves  through 
the  esteem  and  the  affection,  or  through  the  censure  and  the 
coolness  of  those  who  surround  the  child,  and  whom  he 
loves.  The  discipline  of  nature  can  be  but  a  preparation 
for  the  discipline  of  sentiments  and  ideas. 


CHAPTEE  XII. 

DISCIPLINE  IN  GENERAL. 

510.  PREVENTIVE  DISCIPLINE. — Discipline  does  not  de- 
pend merely  on  a  system  of  rewards  and  punishments  ex  post 
facto,  as  so  many  sanctions  to  incite  to  the  good  or  to  divert 
from  the  evil.  True  discipline  foresees  and  prevents,  even 
more  than  it  represses  and  rewards.  In  a  well-organized 
school  which  satisfies  certain  material  conditions,  and  in 
which  the  teacher  fulfills  certain  moral  conditions  which  as- 
sure his  authority,  it  will  hardly  ever  be  necessary  to  resort 
to  punishment,  and  rewards  will  appear  rather  as  a  disinter- 
ested act  of  justice  than  as  a  means  of  discipline. 

511.  MATERIAL     CONDITIONS     OF     DISCIPLINE. —  All 
teachers  know  how  much  the  regularity  and  system  which 
they  introduce  into  the  exercises  of  the  school  facilitate  their 
task  and  contribute  to  the  good  order  of  their  class.     Pesta- 
lozzi,  who  had  so  many  moral  qualifications,  who  possessed 
to  such  a  high  degree  the  art  of  making  himself  loved  by 
children-,  who  employed  such  devotion  and  zeal  in  the  service 
of  his  pupils,  was  never  able  to  establish  an  exact  discipline, 
because  he  was  lacking  in  method  and  taught  in  a  disorderly 
manner,  without  subjecting   himself  to   fixed  rules   for  the 
length  of  his  lessons  and  for  the  order  of  exercises ;  in  a 
word,  for  the  distribution  of  his  time. 

512.  DISTRIBUTION    OF    TIME.  —  "The    distribution    of 
time,"  says  Rendu,  "  is  the  principal  means  of  establishing 

468 


464  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

discipline.   .   .   .     The  question  of  discipline  is  in  great  part 
a  question  of  instruction  and  method." 

Through  the  indications  of  the  programme,  which  deter- 
mines at  once  the  topics  of  instruction  and  the  number  of 
hours  which  it  is  advisable  to  give  to  each  study  in  the  three 
grades  of  the  common  school,  the  teacher  is  now  guided  in 
the  distribution  of  his  time,  and  no  longer  runs  the  risk  of 
falling  into  mistakes.  Let  us  add,  however,  that  circum- 
stances, such  as  the  requirements  of  time  and  place,  the 
number  and  relative  proficiency  of  pupils,  ought,  as  between 
one  school  and  another,  to  justify  considerable  differences. 
We  are  not  of  those  who  dream  of  an  absolute  uniformity, 
and  wish  that  at  a  given  moment  the  millions  of  children  who 
attend  the  schools  of  France  should  be  engaged  in  the  same 
exercise. 

"  The  ingenuity  of  an  intelligent  teacher  ought  not  to  be 
paralyzed  by  the  rigid  inflexibility  of  a  schedule.  We  do  not 
assume  to  impose  a  time-table  upon  teachers,  as  a  vise  which 
binds  them;  we  offer  it  to  them  as  a  rule  to  guide  them. 
Doubtless,  in  the  domain  of  common-school  instruction  more 
than  in  any  other  sphere  of  teaching,  there  must  be  required 
regularity,  exactness,  and  the  spirit  of  system;  but  here  as 
everywhere  else  it  is  best  to  leave  something  to  spontaneity, 
to  personal  reflection,  and  to  free  choice.  We  dread  the 
absence  of  method,  which  leads  to  school  anarchy ;  but  we 
detest  the  circumstantial  tyranny  which,  sinking  the  man  in 
the  master,  gives  to  mechanical  education  the  place  due  to 
intelligence."  1 

513.  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  FOR  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OP 
TIME. —  The  distribution  of  time  ought  not  merely  to  be 
regulated  in  advance  by  the  teacher,  but  it  ought  to  be 
brought  to  the  knowledge  of  the  pupils  by  schedules  posted 
in  each  class-room. 

1  E.  Rendu,  Manuel,  p.  32. 


DISCIPLINE   IN   GENERAL.  465 

Without  describing  in  detail  the  distribution  of  study  hours 
and  of  the  different  topics  of  instruction,  we  will  state  the 
general  principles  which  result  from  all  that  we  have  said  in 
the  preceding  chapters. 

1.  Each  section  ought  to   be   engaged   in  several   differ- 
ent  exercises.      With  the  pupils  of  the  common  school,  in 
particular,  we  must  renounce   prolonged   lessons   upon   the 
same   subject.     Such  lessons  are  not  possible,  save  in  the 
higher  classes  of  the  colleges  or  in  the  courses  of  higher 
instruction. 

2.  Each  session  ought   to   be  interrupted,  either  by  the 
ordinary  recess  or  by  marching  and  singing. 

3.  In  schools  taught  by  one  master,  the  teacher  will  each 
day  come  into  direct  communication  with  all  his  pupils,  and 
consequently  with  each  one  of  the  three  grades.      Hence  the 
necessity  of  collective   lessons,  which   may   bear  on  certain 
parts  of  history,  of  morals,  etc. 

4.  Each  item  in  the  programme  ought  each  day  to  have 
its  share  in  the  exercises  of  the  school.     None  of  them  ought 
to  be  sacrificed,  even  if  but  a  few  minutes  can  be  devoted  to 
some  of  them. 

5.  The   most  difficult  exercises,  those  which  require  the 
most  attention,  ought  by  preference  to  come   in  the  early 
part  of  the  day. 

6.  The  length  of  each  lesson  and  of  each  exercise  should 
not  as  a  rule  exceed  twenty  or  thirty  minutes. 

7.  Every  lesson,  every  lecture,  should  be  accompanied  by 
oral  explanations  and  interrogations. 

8.  The  correction  of  tasks  and  the  repetition  of  lessons 
take  place  during  the  periods  assigned  to  these  tasks  and 
lessons.     According  to  the  rule  the  tasks  are  corrected  at 
the    blackboard    at    the   same    time   that    the    note-l>ooks 
are    inspected.      The    compositions    are  corrected   by   the 
teacher  out  of  school  hours. 


466  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

514.  CLASSIFICATION  OF   PUPILS. — That  which    hinders 
the   maintenance   of  discipline   as  well  as  the   progress  of 
pupils,  is  that  by  the  very   necessity  of  things  there  are 
united  in  the  same  class   pupils    very   unequal   in   age,  in 
degree   of    instruction,    and    in    intellectual     development. 
Disorder  is  almost  the  necessary  result  of  this  disproportion 
and  of  these  inequalities.     Nothing  is  more  important,  con- 
sequently, than  the  classification  of  pupils. 

"Each  year,  at  the  opening  of  school,"  says  the  official 
order  of  1882,  "the  pupils,  according  to  the  degree  of  their  in- 
struction, shall  be  distributed  by  the  director  in  the  different 
classes  of  the  three  grades  under  the  supervision  of  the 
primary  inspector." 

This  rule  is  applicable  not  only  to  large  schools  having 
several  teachers,  but  also  to  schools  with  one  teacher.  And 
even  in  the  latter  the  classification  ought  to  be  even  more 
exact  if  it  be  possible,  because  the  one  teacher,  obliged  to 
distribute  his  time  among  the  three  grades,  ought  to  be  able 
to  depend  a  little  more  either  upon  the  initiative  of  pupils  or 
upon  the  aid  of  some  intelligent  monitors. 

515.  CONSEQUENCES   FROM  THE   DISCIPLINARY  POINT   OF 
VIEW.  —  Who  does  not  see  that  discipline  will  gain  from  a 
school  organization  regulated  in  this  spirit?     Invited  to  an 
instruction  which  responds  exactly  to  his  powers  and  to  his 
needs,  sustained  by  the  variety  of  the  exercises,  reanimated 
by  frequent  recreations,  always  subjected  to  an  invariable 
rule  which  he  knows,  never  remaining  unemployed,  instructed 
in  advance  with  reference  to  what  he  ought  to  do  at  the  dif- 
ferent hours  of  the  day,  the  pupil  will  find  himself  in  the  best 
conditions  for  working  with  order  and  profit. 

516.  NECESSITY    ov     VIGOROUS     SUPERVISION. —  Formal 
rules,  however,  are  not   sufficient.     The   pupil    is    not  yet 


DISCIPLINE    IN   GENERAL.  467 

sufficiently  master  of  himself,  sufficiently  energetic  and  well- 
disposed,  to  follow  spontaneously  the  course  that  has  been 
traced  for  him  by  a  carefully  arranged  programme.  There 
must  be  taken  into  account  the  weaknesses  of  will  and  the 
thoughtlessness  of  early  age,  and  the  dissipation,  indolence, 
and  ill-will  common  to  masses  of  children.  The  execu- 
tion of  the  laws  of  the  school  is  dependent  on  the  vigilant  eye 
of  the  master.  How  much  easier  the  discipline  becomes  with 
an  active  teacher  who  observes  all  the  movements  of  his 
pupils,  who  watches  their  dispositions,  who  stops  by  a  word 
or  a  look  the  beginning  of  a  conversation,  who  reanimates  the 
attention  at  the  moment  when  it  begins  to  flag,  who,  in  a 
word,  always  present  in  the  four  corners  of  the  class-room, 
is,  so  to  speak,  the  living  soul  of  the  school. 

517.  THE  TEACHER'S  DUTIES  our  OF  SCHOOL.  —  But 
the  vigilance  and  solicitude  of  a  good  teacher  do  not  cease 
at  the  threshold  of  the  school ;  they  ought  to  follow  the  pupil 
even  into  the  family,  and  accompany  him  in  a  certain 
measure  on  the  road  which  leads  him  from  the  school  to  the 
home.  He  may  discreetly  inform  himself  of  what  children 
do  when  they  have  reached  home,  and  how  they  conduct 
themselves  in  the  streets  or  on  the  roads.  Through  the 
influence  which  he  will  discreetly  exert  upon  the  conduct  of 
his  pupils  outside  of  the  school,  he  will  assure  their  correct 
deportment  and  the  silence  and  order  of  the  school-room 
itself.  Children  who  are  too  wild  at  home,  or  who  have  been 
too  disorderly  on  the  streets,  have  great  difficulty  when  the 
bell  rings  to  become  by  an  instantaneous  transformation 
attentive  and  quiet  pupils. 

By  the  personal  labor  which  he  will  impose  upon  himself, 
the  teacher  will  also  contribute  to  the  maintenance  of  good 
discipline  in  the  school.  A  well-prepared  lesson  is  worth 
much  more  than  punishments  for  gaining  the  attention  of 


468  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

the  scholars.  "When  the  teacher  reaches  his  desk,  well 
knowing  what  he  ought  to  do  and  what  he  ought  to  say ; 
when  wholly  pervaded  by  his  subject  he  can  pursue  his 
thought  without  effort,  he  will  first  have  that  assurance  that 
he  will  more  easily  interest  his  auditors  and  that  he  will  more 
surely  conduct  them  to  the  desired  end  ;  and  at  the  same  time, 
relieved  from  the  anxiety  of  hunting  up  his  ideas  and  his 
words,  and  of  organizing  his  class  on  the  spur  of  the  moment 
and  by  a  sort  of  improvisation,  he  will  the  more  easily  be 
able  to  survey  his  little  auditor}7,  to  be  all  things  to  all,  and 
to  let  nothing  escape  that  is  incorrect  or  abnormal  in  the 
conduct  of  his  pupils. 

Let  us  add  that  in  order  to  assure  the  discipline  so  far  as 
the  pupils'  diligence  and  exactness  of  work  are  concerned, 
the  industry  of  the  teacher  is  particularly  necessary.  The 
child  of  the  best  intentions  is  discouraged  if  the  written 
exercises  which  he  has  prepared  with  the  greatest  care  are 
never  corrected.  It  is  not  merely  because  the  faults  which 
he  has  allowed  to  pass  are  proofs  of  his  ignorance,  that  the 
lack  of  correction  is  mischievous,  but  mainly  because  the 
negligence  of  the  teacher  emboldens  and  partly  excuses 
the  negligence  of  the  pupil. 

518.  CO-OPERATION  OF  TEACHERS  WITH  PARENTS. — The 
best  of  teachers  can  do  nothing  in  the  matter  of  discipline 
without  the  co-operation  of  parents.  "There  is  no  system 
of  education  so  poor,"  says  Greard,  "  as  not  to  improve  in 
quality  by  the  intervention  of  the  family,  and  none  so  good 
that  it  cannot  gain  by  it."  Rollin  regarded  the  participa- 
tion of  parents  in  all  that  concerns  moral  development  as 
one  of  the  essential  factors  in  the  internal  government  of 
colleges.  What  is  true  of  secondary  instruction  is  also 
true  of  primary  instruction.  It  is  necessary,  then,  that  the 
teacher  should  be  in  constant  communication  with  the 


DISCIPLINE   IN   GENERAL.  469 

families,  that  he  keep  them  regularly  informed  as  to  the  work 
and  progress  of  their  children,  and  that  he  bring  .their  faults 
to  their  notice.  Hence  the  utility  of  reports  to  parents. 
Happy  the  teachers  who  can  co-operate  with  parents  and  in- 
duce them  to  second  their  efforts  and  to  supervise  the  lessons 
which  are  to  be  learned  and  the  tasks  that  are  to  be  written. 
From  this  point  of  view,  the  lessons  assigned  for  home  study, 
besides  compelling  the  pupil  to  work  more  than  the  thirty 
hours  required  in  the  school,  have  this  advantage,  that  they 
oblige  parents  to  interest  themselves  in  the  studies  of  their 
children.  But  home  lessons  ought  to  be  easy,  and  should  not 
require  the  formal  machinery  which  cannot  be  reak'zed  in 
most  families. 

"Home  duties,"  savs  M.  Greard,  "ought  to  be  adapted,  as 
the  others  are,  not  only  to  the  very  limited  time  which  pupils 
have  at  their  disposal  after  school,  but  also  and  above  all  to 
the  intensity  of  the  effective  efforts  which  the  pupil  can  make. 
I  am  not  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  in  assigning  these  lessons 
our  teachers  sometimes  do  no  more  than  respond  to  the  de- 
mands of  parents  who  fear  the  lack  of  occupation  in  the 
evening,  and  who  estimate  work  by  the  quantity  of  paper  that 
is  used.  But  we  ought  not  to  yield  to  unintelligent  desires. 
It  is  doubtless  well  that  the  pupils  of  the  higher  grade  'should 
be  occupied  at  home  in  the  evening.  Let  them  engage  in  the 
reading  of  history  and  geography,  in  reproducing  the  explana- 
tion of  words  taken  from  a  lesson  in  grammar,  or  in  solving 
some  problems  in  arithmetic.  This  is  all  well,  but  on  the  ex- 
press condition  that  these  exercises  offer  no  difficulty  which 
repels  the  child  left  to  himself,  and  that  they  be  connected 
with  a  lesson  on  which  his  memory  is  fresh,  and  particularly 
that  they  be  short." 

519.  MORAL  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  FAMILY.  —  That  which 
the  teacher  ought  particularly  to  demand  of  the  family  is 
that  it  should  not  dissipate  his  own  efforts,  that  it  should 


470  PKACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

not  contravene  his  instructions,  but  that  it  should  add  its  own 
more  secre,t,  more  intimate,  more  personal  action  to  that 
which  he  exerts  himself. 

"We  have  the  right  to  expect  much  from  the  active  co- 
operation of  parents,  however  little  they  may  desire  it.  We 
are  not  ignorant  of  the  difficulties  and  obstacles  which  their 
perspicacity  may  encounter.  We  make  allowance  for  illusions 
and  weaknesses.  By  reason  of  their  very  affection,  they  are 
in  danger  of  entertaining  too  high  hopes  and  of  despairing  too 
quickly.  The  cool  and  disinterested  judgment  of  a  teacher  is 
often  necessary  to  re-establish  moderation.  And  who  is  nearer 
the  heart  of  the  child  than  father  and  mother  ?  Who  can 
better  take  into  account  his  instinctive  propensities  and  his 
nascent  passions ;  separate  his  good  qualities  from  his  bad ; 
in  his  departures  from  duty  distinguish  the  swooning  or 
transient  revolt  of  radical  weakness  from  obstinate  resistance  ? 
Who  better  knows  his  sensibility,  and  how  to  excite  it  when 
necessary;  to  subject  him,  according  to  circumstances,  to  the 
necessities  which  arise,  and  to  make  him  triumph  over  the 
difficulties  which  pertain  only  to  himself  ?  Who  can  better 
follow  the  crises  which  arrest  or  hasten  his  development?  In 
a  word,  who  is  better  fitted  to  treat  him  in  all  his  trans- 
formations according  to  his  temperament,  and  give  him  the 
moral  regime  that  is  best  for  him?"1 

520.  MORAL  CONDITIONS  OF  DISCIPLINE.  —  The  co-oper- 
ation of  teachers  and  parents  proceeding  in  concert,  hand  in 
hand,  to  correct  the  faults  of  children  and  to  develop  their 
virtues,  is  in  itself  one  of  the  moral  conditions  of  discipline. 

Another  condition  is  the  character  of  the  teacher,  his 
authority,  his  moral  power.  What  is  true  of  programmes 
and  methods  in  instruction  is  also  true  of  rules  in  discipline, 
—  their  value  is  given  to  them  by  those  who  apply  them.  It 
is  at  this  point  that  we  must  always  start,  whether  we  have 

1  M.  Greard,  Memoir  sur  I'esprit  de  discipline. 


DISCIPLINE   IN   GENERAL.  471 

« 

to  do  with  the  internal  government  of  schools  or  with  that 
of  other  human  institutions.  Begin  by  having  men,  and  all 
the  rest  will  be  given  to  you  to  boot. 

521.  QUALITIES  OP  A  GOOD  TEACHER. — Treatises  on 
pedagogy  draw  up  long  catalogues  of  the  qualities  of  a  good 
teacher.  We  do  not  propose  in  this  place  to  present  one  of 
these  catalogues  in  which  the  pedagogic  virtues  are  num- 
bered, and  which  require  the  teachers  to  have  ten  or  a  dozen 
of  them,  more  or  less.  The  moral  education  of  a  teacher 
has  nothing  to  gain  from  these  fastidious  nomenclatures. 
We  shall  simply  say  that  the  best  teacher  is  he  who  has  to 
the  highest  degree  the  disposal  of  intellectual  and  moral 
qualities  ;  he  who  on  the  one  hand  has  the  most  knowledge, 
method,  clearness,  and  vivacity  of  exposition,  and  on  the 
other  is  the  most  energetic,  the  most  devoted  to  his  task,  the 
most  attached  to  his  duties,  and  at  the  same  time  has  most 
affection  for  his  pupils. 

It  would  be  easy  to  show  that  each  of  these  qualities  or 
virtues  is  an  element  of  discipline. 

A  teacher  whose  knowledge  is  not  questioned,  who  is 
never  obscure  in  his  lessons,  who  speaks  with  exactness,  will 
always  be  listened  to  with  respect. 

A  teacher  whose  every  act  is  known  to  be  inspired  by  love 
for  his  pupils,  has  only  to  speak  to  be  obeyed.  He  will 
govern  by  persuasion. 

Especially  a  firm  teacher,  who  possesses  the  serenity  of 
conscious  power,  will  inspire  his  pupils  with  a  salutary  re- 
spect which  will  make  it  impossible  for  them  to  fail  in  their 
tasks. 

In  discussing  the  law  of  1833,  Guizot  stated  the  principal 
qualities  which  he  expected  of  a  teacher  in  the  new  schools, 
as  follows : 

"All  our  efforts   and    all  our  sacrifices    will    be    useless,   if 


472  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

we  do  not  succeed  in  finding  for  the  reconstructed  public 
school  a  competent  teacher  worthy  of  the  noble  mission  of 
instructing  the  people.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that 
as  is  the  teacher  so  is  the  school.  And  what  a  happy  union 
of  qualities  is  necessary  to  make  a  good  school-master !  A 
good  school-master  is  a  man  who  ought  to  know  much  more 
than  he  teaches,  in  order  to  teach  with  intelligence  and  zeal; 
who  ought  to  live  in  an  humble  sphere,  and  who  nevertheless 
ought  to  have  an  elevated  soul  in  order  to  preserve  that  dig- 
nity of  feeling  and  even  of  manner  without  which  he  will 
never  gain  the  respect  and  confidence  of  families;  who  ought 
to  possess  a  rare  union  of  mildness  and  firmness,  for  he  is 
the  inferior  of  many  people  in  a  commune.  But  he  ought 
to  be  the  degraded  servant  of  no  one ;  not  ignorant  of  his 
rights,  but  thinking  much  more  of  his  duties;  giving  an  ex- 
ample to  all,  serving  all  as  an  adviser ;  above  all,  not 
desiring  to  withdraw  from  his  occupation,  content  with  his 
situation  because  of  the  good  he  is  doing  in  it,  resolved  to 
live  and  die  in  the  bosom  of  the  school,  in  the  service  of 
common-school  instruction,  which  is  for  him  the  service  of 
God  and  of  men.  To  train  teachers  who  approach  such  a 
model  is  a  difficult  task ;  and  yet  we  must  succeed  in  it, 
or  we  have  done  nothing  for  common-school  instruction.  A 
bad  school-master,  like  a  bad  cure  or  a  bad  mayor,  is  a 
scourge  to  a  commune.  We  are  certainly  very  often  com- 
pelled to  content  ourselves  with  ordinary  teachers,  but  we 
must  try  to  train  better  ones,  and  for  this  purpose  primary 
normal  schools  are  indispensable." 

522.  IMPORTANCE  OF  PHYSICAL  QUALIFICATIONS.  —  The 
physical  qualities  of  the  teacher  are  not  themselves  to  be 
despised  as  an  instrument  of  discipline.  Form,  physiognomy, 
and  voice  play  their  part  in  well-conducted  schools.  It  is 
useless  to  insist  on  those  qualities  which  depend  wholly  on 
nature ;  but  what  an  earnest  purpose  can  control  are  the 
general  bearing  of  the  body,  the  appearance  of  the  face,  and 
gestures. 


DISCIPLINE   IN   GENERAL.  473 

"Never  assume  without  an  extreme  necessity,"  said  Fe"nelon, 
"an  austere  and  imperious  air,  which  makes  children  trem- 
ble. Often  it  is  affectation  and  pedantry  in  those  who 
govern." 

Without  requiring,  as  Fenelon  wished,  that  the  teacher 
should  always  have  a  smiling  and  jovial  face,  it  is  especially 
important  that  he  be  generally  amiable  and  affectionate,  and 
that  he  shun  pedantry  and  despotic  ways. 

523.  MORAL  AUTHORITY  OF  THE  TEACHER.  —  But  phy- 
sical qualities  are  of  little  account  compared  with  moral 
qualities,  which  are  the  principal  element  of  authority.  By 
dint  of  patience,  energy,  and  activity,  a  teacher,  even 
physically  uncomely,  may  acquire  a  real  ascendancy  over  his 
pupils.  The  teacher  is  not  truly  worthy  of  his  name  of 
master,  except  when  he  masters  his  school  by  the  ascendancy 
of  his  moral  authority.  External  and  in  some  sort  mechan- 
ical means  of  discipline  are  worth  nothing,  unless  they  are 
seconded  by  the  moral  force  which  only  good  teachers 
possess,  and  in  schools  where  this  moral  authority  is  well 
established  they  become  almost  useless. 

"  To  control  the  wills  of  children,  to  root  in  their  minds 
the  conviction  that  it  is  not  possible  not  to  follow  the 
orders  and  suggestions  of  the  teacher,  to  inspire  them  with 
an  absolute  confidence  in  his  judgment,  —  these  are  the 
essential  conditions  for  the  good  government  of  the  school."1 

To  begin  with,  the  teacher  ought  to  make  himself  loved. 
Affection  is  one  of  the  mainsprings  of  human  activity. 
What  will  not  one  do  for  those  whom  he  loves  ?  How  easily 
he  obeys  them  !  And  the  best  means  to  make  himself  loved 
is  himself  to  love.  But  the  teacher  ought  also  to  make  him- 
self respected  and  feared.  The  true  discipline  is  the 
mingling  of  mildness  and  severity. 

i  E.  Rendu,  Manuel,  p.  91. 


474  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

524.  CONTINUITY   IN   DISCIPLINE.  —  One  of    the    reasons 
which  the  most  often  weaken  the  authority  of  the  teacher  is 
the  disorder,  the  looseness,  and  the  contradictions  which  he 
introduces  into  the  discipline  that  he  imposes.     A  govern- 
ment which  passes  from  extreme  rigor  to  extreme  weakness, 
which  at  one  time    tolerates  an  excess  of   liberty  and  at 
another  treats  the  lightest  faults  with  severity,  is  the  worst 
of  governments  in  education  as  in  politics.     A  rule  once 
established  should  never  be  departed  from.      I  well  know 
that  this   unvarying   tension,  this   uniformity   which   never 
wavers,  is  a  difficult  thing ;  but  it  is  a  thing  that  is  neces- 
sary.    The  actual  education,  said  Richter  wittily,  resembles 
the  harlequin  of  the  Italian  comedy,  who  comes  on  the  stage 
with  a  bundle  of  papers  under  each  arm.     "What  do  you 
carry  under  your  right  arm?  "    "  Orders,"  he  replies.    "And 
under  your  left  arm?  "     "  Counter  orders."     Thus  pulled  in 
different  directions,  disconcerted   by   contradictor}7    orders, 
always  thinking  to  escape  a  rule  which  is  not  imperiously 
followed,  the   pupil  loses  all  control  of  himself   and  goes 
adrift. 

525.  VERSATILITY  IN  THE  USE  OF  MEANS.  —  If  it  is  true, 
on  the  one  hand,  that  discipline  ought  to  be  inflexible  in 
the  rules  which  it  imposes,  it  is  none  the  less  necessary,  on 
the  other,  that  it  be  supple  and  variable  in  the  means  which 
it  employs.      All  pupils  have  not  the  same  character,  the 
same   disposition.      What   is  relative   mildness   with   some 
would  be  extreme  severity  with  others.     Just  as  the  pro- 
fessor studies  the  diversity  of  intelligences  in  order  to  find 
access  to  them,  and  adapts  his  instruction  to  the  degree  of 
aptness  of  each  mind,  so  the  educator  ought  to  take  account 
of  differences  of  character,  and  estimate  the  degree  of  power 
and  of  weakness  in  each  temperament,  so  as  to  adjust  aid 
to  need  and  to  distribute   equitably  as  the  case  requires 
reward  or  punishment. 


DISCIPLINE   IN    GENERAL.  475 

"His  object,"  says  M.  Greard  again,  "is  to  follow  the  child 
across  the  different  phases  of  his  moral  life,  and  in  the 
common  life  whose  rules  he  follows  to  assure  to  him  the 
development  of  his  individual  life." 

With  some  the  teacher  must  ever  be  affectionate  and  good  ; 
with  others  he  must  use  severity.  At  one  time  he  must 
multiply  excitations  to  arouse  a  sluggish  nature  ;  at  another 
he  must  use  moderation  and  constraint. 

With  one  he  must  always  talk  reason  ;  with  another  he  will 
make  a  constant  appeal  to  feeling. 

526.  THE  HIGHER  PURPOSE  OF  DISCIPLINE.  —  Discipline 
does  not  tend  merely  to  establish  silence  and  good  order  in 
classes,  assiduous  and  exact  labor;  but  it  thinks  of  the 
future  and^  aims  at  training  men.  Its  purpose  in  some 
sort  is  to  make  itself  useless.  School  authority  ought  to  be 
exercised  only  with  the  intention  of  making  the  child  inde- 
pendent of  the  yoke  of  all  external  authority.  Not  that  an 
absolute  enfranchisement  of  the  human  person  is  to  be 
dreamed  of ;  at  every  age  and  in  all  conditions  man  will 
always  have  to  obey,  —  his  superiors  under  the  flag  and  in 
the  workshop,  the  law  and  its  representatives  in  society. 
But  this  necessary  subjection  does  not  prevent  liberty,  which 
is  the  discipline  that  one  imposes  on  himself ;  and  the  object 
of  education  of  all  grades  is  to  make  men  free. 

Hence  the  characteristics  of  the  discipline  truly  liberal, 
which  does  not  attempt  to  establish  obedience  by  fear  and 
passive  habits,  but  which  ever  addresses  itself  to  the  personal 
activity  and  the  will,  which  respects  the  dignity  of  the  child, 
which  exalts  rather  than  humiliates,  which  does  not  stifle  the 
natural  powers,  but  which  trains  them  to  govern  them- 
selves. 

"  This  reflective  enfranchisement,  which  is  the  purpose  of 
education,"  says  M.  Greard,  "  requires  in  the  child  two  in- 


476  PRACTICAL   PEDAGOGY. 

dispensable  conditions  of  inward  toil, — reflection  and  activ- 
ity;—  reflection,  which  renders  account  to  one's  self,  and 
activity,  which  comes  to  a  decision.  No  one  attains  to  self- 
direction  except  at  this  price. 

"  To  put  to  use  the  moral  aptitudes  which  lie  concealed 
in  the  consciousness  of  the  child  and  to  make  him  know 
their  tendencies,  the  evil  as  well  as  the  good;  to  accustom 
him  to  look  clearly  into  his  mind  and  heart,  to  be  sincere 
and  true,  to  make  him  put  in  practice  in  his  conduct,  little 
by  little,  the  resolutions  he  forms;  insensibly  to  substitute 
for  the  rules  which  have  been  given  him  those  which  he 
gives  himself,  and  for  the  discipline  from  without  that  which 
is  from  within;  to  enfranchise  him,  not  by  beat  of  drum 
after  the  ancient  manner,  but  day  by  day,  by  striking  off 
at  each  step  of  progress  one  link  of  the  chain  which  at- 
taches his  reason  to  the  reason  of  another ;  after  having 
thus  aided  him  in  establishing  himself  as  his  owli  master,  to 
teach  him  to  come  out  of  himself  and  to  judge  and  govern 
himself  as  he  would  judge  and  govern  others ;  finally,  to 
show  him  above  himself  the  grand  ideas  of  duty,  public  and 
private,  which  are  imposed  on  him  as  a  human  and  social 
being ;  —  such  are  the  principles  of  the  education  which  can 
make  the  pupil  pass  from  the  discipline  of  the  school  under 
the  discipline  of  his  own  reason,  and  which  creates  his  moral 
personality  by  calling  it  into  exercise." 


APPENDIX. 


A.     PAGE  133. 
THE  DOCTRINE  OF  MEMORY. 

IN  stating  the  doctrine  that  the  memory  should  not  anticipate 
the  intelligence,  M.  Compayre"  is  doubtless  in  accord  with  most 
modern  writers  on  education  ;  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  this  ground 
is  taken  rather  as  a  recoil  from  an  old  error  than  from  a  due 
consideration  of  the  relation  which  the  memory  bears  to  the  other 
intellectual  faculties.  It  must  be  plain  that  the  exercise  of  the 
intelligence  presupposes  the  presence  of  some  material  on  which 
the  mind  can  react  in  the  way  of  elaboration,  and  that  this 
material  must  be  held  within  the  range  of  the  mind's  elaborative 
power.  Retention  and  representation  must  therefore  precede  the 
process  of  thought.  To  say  that  we  should  memorize  only  what 
-we  understand  is  very  much  like  saying  that  we  should  commit 
nothing  to  the  stomach  until  it  has  been  digested.  We  eat  to 
the  end  that  we  may  digest;  and  we  must  confide  material 
to  the  retentive  power  of  the  mind  in  order  that  the  intelli- 
gence may  have  something  to  work  upon.  The  only  question 
in  the  case  seems  to  me  to  be  this  :  Shall  this  material  be  held 
loosely,  by  what  the  author  calls  the  "  liberal  memory  of  ideas," 
or  exactly,  by  what  he  calls  the  "  strict  memory  of  words "  ? 

This  last  is  doubtless  what  is  usually  called  "  memorizing,"  or 
"  learning  by  heart."  In  many  cases  informal,  or  loose,  memoriz- 
ing will  suffice;  but  in  other  cases  exact  or  verbal  memorizing 
is  best.  But  in  either  case  the  memory  must  anticipate  the 
intelligence. 

477 


478  APPENDIX. 

Material  that  has  been  transformed  by  the  elaborative  power 
of  the  mind  (the  understanding)  must  then  be  held  for  the  per- 
manent use  or  adornment  of  the  spirit  by  a  sort  of  organic  regis- 
tration ;  and  it  is  doubtless  this  final  and  perfect  form  of  the 
retentive  process  which  writers  have  in  view  when  they  say  that 
nothing  must  be  memorized  which  is  not  understood.  If  it  is 
recollected  that  there  is  also  a  form  of  retention  which  precedes 
the  act  of  thought  proper,  all  the  real  difficulties  of  this  subject 
will  disappear,  and  there  will  be  no  antagonism  between  psycho- 
logical theory  and  the  universal  practice  of  mankind.  (P.) 


B.     PAGE  282. 
ANALYSIS  AND  SYNTHESIS. 

THAT  writers  on  education  use  the  terms  analysis  and  synthesis 
in  directly  contrary  senses,  and  that  great  confusion  has  thereby 
been  introduced  into  the  discussion  of  method,  is  a  fact  which 
must  be  admitted  and  one  which  is  greatly  to  be  deplored ;  but 
the  important  question  still  remains,  Is  there  a  real  and  an 
intelligible  sense  in  which  these  terms  are  descriptive  of  mental 
phenomena  ?  Is  there  a  mode  of  mental  activity  in  which  aggre- 
gates are  resolved  into  constituent  parts,  and  another  mode  in 
which  parts  are  reconstructed  into  aggregates  ?  If  there  is,  then 
the  term  analysis"  may  be  intelligently  applied  to  the  first  and 
the  term  synthesis  to  the  second. 

As  to  the  psychological  fact  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Perhaps 
the  clearest  statement  of  this  law  of  mental  activity  has  been 
made  by  Sir  William  Hamilton  in  these  terms  : 

"  The  first  procedure  of  the  mind  in  the  elaboration  of  its 
knowledge  is  always  analytical.  It  descends  from  the  whole 
to  the  parts,  from  the  vague  to  the  definite." 

"  This  is  the  fundamental  procedure  of  philosophy,  and  is  called 
by  a  Greek  term  Analysis."" 

"  But  though  analysis  be  the  fundamental  procedure,  it  is  still 


APPENDIX.  479 

only  a  means  towards  an  end.  We  analyze  only  that  we  may 
comprehend ;  and  we'  comprehend  only  inasmuch  as  \ve  are  able 
to  reconstruct  in  thought  the  complex  effects  which  we  have 
analyzed  into  their  elements.  This  mental  reconstruction  is, 
therefore,  the  final,  the  consummative  procedure  of  philosophy, 
and  is  familiarly  known  by  the  Greek  term  Synthesis." 

It  thus  appears  that  the  terms  analysis  and  synthesis,  employed 
in  the  very  same  sense  as  in  chemistry,  are  necessary  in  order 
to  formulate  a  fundamental  law  of  mental  activity ;  and  this  law 
is  the  safest  clew  we  have  in  the  discussion  of  method,  as  it  evi- 
dently underlies  the  whole  art  of  presentation.  (P.) 


C.     PAGE  298. 
THE  PROBLEM  OF  PRIMARY  READING. 

THIS  problem  admits  of  what  might  be  called  a  psychological 
solution,  and  furnishes  a  typical  illustration  of  the  deduction  of 
a  method  from  a  general  principle.  This  problem  may  be  stated 
comprehensively  as  follows : 

To  assist  the  child  in  making  the  most  direct  transition  from  spoken 
to  written  language. 

Or,  the  problem  may  be  stated  analytically  in  these  terms  : 

(1)  To  teach  the  child  a  small  and  select  vocabulary  of  printed  words; 
and  (2)  to  give  him  power  to  name  new  words  for  himself. 

1.  The  principal  methods  that  have  been  employed  for  intro- 
ducing the  child  to  the  art  of  reading  are  the  following :  (1.) 
The  Alphabetic;  (2.)  The  Phonic;  (3.)  The  Phonetic ;  (4.)  The 
Word;  (5.)  The  Sentence.  The  first  three  methods  proceed 
from  elements  (letters)  to  aggregates  (words),  and  are  therefore 
analytic ;  while  the  last  two  proceed  from  aggregates  (words  or 
sentences)  to  elements  (syllables  and  letters),  and  are  therefore 
synthetic.  The  question  now  at  issue  is  this :  Which  procedure 
conforms  to  the  organic  mode  of  mental  activity,  the  analytic 
or  the  synthetic .'  From  the  psychological  law  stated  under  B, 


480  APPENDIX. 

the  inference  is  irresistible  that  preference  must  be  given  to 
methods  which  are  analytical;  so  that  our  choice  is  now  between 
the  WORD  and  the  SENTENCE  methods.  Both  are  correct  in 
principle ;  but  as  the  smaller  aggregate  seems  to  me  the  more 
convenient  and  manageable,  I  give  my  preferences  to  the  WORD 
METHOD. 

2.  In  order  to  name  (pronounce)  new  words  for  himself,  a  child 
must  know  three  things:  (1.)  The  letters  of  the  alphabet;  (2.) 
The  elementary  sounds  of  the  language ;  and  (3.)  The  association 
of  letter  and  sound.  It  must  be  plain  that  in  order  to  pronounce 
a  new  word  of  his  own  accord,  the  pupil  must  be  able  to  infer  its 
name  from  its  form,  and  reading  aloud  might  be  called  translating 
form  into  sound;  and  this  power  of  inference,  though  never 
infallible,  can  be  gained  from  a  ready  knowledge  of  these  three 
elements. 

The  question  now  presented  is  this :  How  can  these  three 
things  be  taught  the  most  expeditiously  ?  Without  entering  into 
any  explanation  or  discussion  the  following  summary  answer  may 
be  given  :  (1.)  The  easiest  way  to  teach  the  elements  of  words  is 
by  requiring  the  pupil  to  print  or  draw  them  on  slate,  board, 
or  paper;  (2.)  The  best  way  to  teach  the  elementary  sounds  of 
the  language  is  by  phonic  analysis  or  slow  pronunciation;  (3.) 
The  association  of  letter  and  sound  is  best  taught  by  oral  spelling. 

According  to  this  analysis  the  successive  steps  in  teaching  a 
child  to  read  are  as  follow : 

1.  Teaching  the  names  of  familiar  words  (say  two  hundred),  at 
sight  upon  the  authority  of  the  teacher; 

2.  Teaching  the  names  of  the  letters  by  printing  words ; 

3.  Teaching  the  elementary  sounds   by  the  analysis    of    spoken 
words ; 

4.  Teaching  the  powers  of  the  letters  by  oral  spelling.     (P.) 

D.     PAGE  366. 
THE  VALUE  OF  SUBJECTS. 

THREE  ideas  should  be  embodied  in  a  course  of  study  :  (1.)  The 
idea  of  training  or  discipline ;  (2.)  The  idea  of  practical  utility ; 


APPENDIX.  481 

(3.)  The  idea  of  culture,  one  chief  mark  of  which  is  contem- 
plative delight.  Under  another  form  this  thought  may  be 
expressed  as  follows :  Education  should  form  or  train  the  mind, 
and  furnish  it  with  knowledge  for  two  purposes,  —  practical  use 
and  enjoyment.  The  three  values  involved  in  studies  may  be 
called  the  disciplinary,  the  practical,  and  the  culture  values  respect- 
ively. Every  subject  doubtless  has  these  three  values,  though  in 
different  degrees,  but  each  subject  is  characterized  by  what  may 
be  called  its  'major  value.  In  other  terms,  there  are  three  lines 
of  defence  for  the  various  studies  included  in  a  curriculum,  and 
a  subject  which  is  known  to  have  a  high  value  of  either  sort  is 
entitled  to  a  place  in  a  course  of  study. 

A  disciplinary  study  communicates  power;  a  practical  study 
furnishes  knowledge  for  use ;  and  a  culture  study  communicates 
organic  power  and  furnishes  knowledge  for  enjoyment.  With 
this  distinction,  and  with  major  values  in  view,  the  studies  of 
the  common  school  course  may  be  grouped  as  follow: 

1.  PRACTICAL  STUDIES  :  Reading,  writing,  spelling,  the  fundamental 
processes  of  arithmetic,  language  lessons,  hygiene,  civics. 

2.  DISCIPLINARY  STUDIES:  Arithmetic  and  grammar. 

8.  CULTURE  STUDIES:  Geography,  history,  and  literature. 

Geography  has  the  same  kind  of  value  as  travel,  and  it  might 
be  called  traveling  by  proxy.  The  direct  practical  value  of 
Geography,  that  is,  its  value  as  estimated  by  the  actual  use  which 
each  individual  makes  of  it,  is  very  small ;  while  its  indirect 
value,  that  is,  the  value  which  comes  to  us  through  the  knowledge 
which  other  persons  have  of  it,  is  very  large.  One  may  be  igno- 
rant of  an  art  or  science,  and  yet  may  enjoy  all  the  practical 
benefits  flowing  from  it.  In  all  such  cases  its  value  is  of  the 
indirect  order.  In  constructing  a  course  of  study  for  a  common 
school,  only  direct  practical  values  must  be  taken  into  account. 
In  Chapter  III.  of  my  "Contributions  to  the  Science  of  Educa- 
tion "  I  have  discussed  this  subject  at  some  length.  (P.) 


INDEX. 


[THB  NUMBERS  REFER  TO  PAGES.] 


Abstraction,  169 ;  child's  repug- 
nance to,  173 ;  difficulties  of,  174. 

Action,  relation  of  feeling  to,  196. 

Adolphus,  Gustavus,  149. 

Esthetic  education,  245. 

Agriculture,  teaching  of,  438. 

Alexander  the  Great,  149. 

Amoras,  43,  234. 

Analysis,  280,  478 ;  grammatical 
and  logical,  336. 

Ancients,  aesthetic  education 
among,  249. 

Antoine,  M.,  146. 

Aptitudes,  special,  71. 

Apollo,  146. 

Aristotle,  187. 

Arithmetic,  440,  445 ;  importance 
of,  379 ;  utility  of,  381 ;  child's 
taste  for,  381 ;  general  method 
of,  382;  material  aids,  384; 
numeral  frames,  counting-ma- 
chines, 385 ;  mental,  385  ;  prob- 
lems, 386  ;  metric  system,  387  ; 
faults,  388. 

Arts,  249 ;  and  morals,  260 ;  a 
source  of  pleasure,  261 ;  in  com- 
mon schools,  253 ;  as  moralizers, 
266. 


Association  of  ideas,  135. 
Attention,  culture  of,  94. 

Bachelier,  417. 

Bacon,  Lord,  269,  287. 

Bain,  Professor,  13n,  18,  74,  116, 
120,  125,  134,  141,  173,  175,  176, 
211,  225,  245,  251,  252,  256,  291n, 
295,  312,  315,  316,  318,  319,  321, 
330n,331n, 332,334,  361,  361,  365, 
366,  367,  369,  371,  376,  380,  382, 
383, 387, 455,  457,  458,  469,  460. 

Baldwin,  James,  65,  72. 

Beautiful,  love  of  the,  248 ;  how 
cultivated,  253. 

Belgium,  schools  of,  443,  methods 
in,  298,  341. 

Bentham,  92. 

Berger,  306,  333. 

Bert,  Paul,  393,  395,  435,  439. 

Bible,  in  moral  education,  224. 

Bishop  of  Versailles,  60u. 

Blackie,  J.  S.,90,  133, 136, 149,  158, 
206,  222,  224,  244. 

Bossuet,  24,  169,  231,  460. 

Botany,  394. 

Bourdaloue,  243. 

Bracket,  334. 

483 


484 


INDEX. 


Braun,  M.  H.,  270n,  360. 

Breal,  110,  325,  332,  334,  340. 

Bridgman,  Laura,  77. 

Brooks,  Edw.,  69. 

Brouard,  298,  307. 

Buffon,  97. 

Buisson,  21,  176n,  280n,  284,  286, 
287,  295,  299,  301,  303,  323,  354, 
360,  367,  373,  374,  376,  385n,  388, 
398,  420. 

Byron,  Lord,  206. 

Cadet,  F.,  341,  443. 

Campan,  Mme.,  116, 117,  451. 

Cartesians,  the,  210,  247. 

Chalamet,  Mile.,  42,  66,  148,  195, 
254,  293,  311,  313,  381,  422,  428. 

Champfleury,  152,  198. 

Character,  244. 

Charbonneau,  282. 

Chateaubriand,  114. 

Chauvet,  27. 

Chemistry,  394. 

Child,  physiology  of,  33 ;  intellect^ 
ual  state  of,  59 ;  respect  for,  64 ; 
in  the  cradle,  73 ;  memory  in 
the,  115 ;  has  it  creative  imagin- 
ation ?  145 ;  judgment  in  the, 
162 ;  tendency  to  generalize,  171 ; 
repugnance  to  abstraction,  173 ; 
reasoning  in  the,  178 ;  develop- 
ment of  sympathy  in  the,  189; 
marks  of  sensibility,  190  ;  neither 
good  nor  bad,  208 ;  evil  instincts 
of,  209 ;  moral  sense  in  the,  214  ; 
imitative  instinct  in  the,  220 ; 
will  in  the,  228;  taste  for  num- 
bers, 381. 

Cinderella,  151. 

Civic  instruction,  history  and,  360, 


411 ;  teaching,  397, 408 ;  necessity 

of,  409 ;   methods  in,  411 ;    and 

politics,  412. 

Classification,  of  pupils,  466. 
Cleanliness,  38. 
Clothing,  29. 
Cocheris,  320. 
Color-blindness,  87. 
Comenius,  75,  144, 151,  241,  302. 
Composition,    153 ;    exercises    in, 

338 ;  from  pictures,  340. 
Condillac,  75,  96, 178,  227. 
Condorcet,  199. 
Conscience,  203,  212. 
Consciousness,  94;    education  of, 

95. 

Counting-machines,  385. 
Cuignet,  82. 
Culture,  methods  of,  56 ;    of    the 

senses,  76 ;  of  the  attention,  94. 
Curiosity,  106. 

Daguet,  267,  275,  280,  282. 

Darwin,  214. 

Da  Vinci,  Leonardo,  263. 

Deduction,  180,  181,  276. 

De  Guimps,  Koger,  219n,  430. 

Delaunay,  299. 

Denzel,  11. 

De  Maintenon,  Mme.,  132, 195,  460. 

De  St.  Pierre,  Abbe,  165, 197. 

De  Sales,  136. 

De  Saussure,  10,  59,  60,  68,  79,  83, 

101,  107,  125,  139,  147,  152,  155, 

157,  160,  208,  211,  240,  254,  269, 

403. 

De  Se'vigne,  Mme.,  37,  143. 
Desire,    difference    between    will 

and,  228. 
De  Stael,  Mme.,  67. 


INDEX. 


485 


Dictation  exercises,  445. 

Didactics,  267. 

Diderot,  180,  449. 

Diesterweg,  6,  7, 17. 

Difficulties,  in  education  of  the 
feelings,  188;  in  moral  educa- 
tion, 219. 

Discipline,  music  and,  430;  school, 
447 ;  means  of,  447 ;  of  conse- 
quences, 460 ;  in  general,  463 ; 
moral  conditions  of,  470 ;  impor- 
tance of  physical  qualifications, 
472 ;  versatility  in  the  use  of 
means,  474 ;  continuity  in,  474 ; 
higher  purpose  of,  475. 

Dor£,  G.,  121. 

Douliot,  134n. 

Drawing,  in  the  common  school, 
417  ;  historical,  418 ;  definitions, 
420 ;  programme,  420 ;  at  what 
age  should  instruction  in  it 
begin  ?  421 ;  children's  taste 
for,  422 ;  taste  for  coloring, 
422 ;  two  methods,  423 ;  partic- 
ular advice,  426. 

Duclos,  295. 

Dupange,  M.,  429,  431. 

Dupanloup,  13n,  15,  54,  64,  106. 

Duruy,  343. 

Duties,  the  teacher's,  out  of  school, 
467. 

Economy,  domestic,  443. 

Edgeworth,  Miss,  89,  105,  108,  109, 
110,  162,  193,  246. 

Education,  origin  of  the  word,  3 ; 
the  prerogative  of  man,  3 ;  is 
there  a  science  of  ?  4 ;  pedagogy 
and,  4  ;  definitions,  9  ;  divisions, 
13,  14;  liberal,  16;  the  work  of 


liberty,  19;  of  authority,  20; 
power  and  limits  of,  23 ;  and  the 
school,  24;  in  a  republic,  26; 
character-building  the  supreme 
end,  26;  physical,  28;  intel- 
lectual, 62 ;  progressive,  60 ;  pain 
in,  68 ;  practical,  71 ;  of  the 
senses,  73 ;  of  conciousness,  95 ; 
of  the  memory,  114 ;  of  the  imag- 
ination, 138 ;  of  the  judgment, 
159;  of  the  reason,  179;  of  the 
feelings,  185  ;  abuse  of  the  feel- 
ings in,  191 ;  moral,  203,  397  ;  in 
liberty,  233 ;  the  will  and,  240 ; 
religious,  245 ;  aesthetic,  245 ; 
self,  241;  of  the  heart,  402; 
through  reflection,  through  prac- 
tice, 403. 

Effort,  necessity  of,  67. 

Egger,  74,  103,  147,  152,  166,  164, 
216. 

Elocution,  341. 

Emerson,  19n. 

Emotions,  division  of,  186 ;  relation 
to  ideas,  194  ;  to  action,  196. 

Emulation,  in  school  discipline, 
448. 

English  methods,  175,  258,  347, 350. 

Esquimaux,  anecdote  of,  109. 

Faculties,  equilibrium  and  har- 
mony of,  61 ;  mutual  support 
of,  62  ;  moral,  203. 

Family,  moral  influence  of  the, 
469. 

Feelings,  culture  of  the,  485 ;  rela- 
tion of  the  will  to  the,  230 ;  the 
higher,  246. 

FcTnelon,  24,  67,  100,  200,  286,  333, 
450,  473. 


486 


INDEX. 


Ferri,  L.,  217. 

Ferry,  Jules,  412,  433,  434. 

Feudal  system,  lesson  on  the,  355. 

Feuerbach,  39. 

Feuillet,  M.,  450,  452. 

Fitch,  130,  347. 

France,  public  school  system  of, 

416 ;  methods  in,  258 ;  University 

of,  416. 

Franklin,  Dr.,  234. 
Frieh,  381. 
Froebel,  49,  70,  78,   79,    105,  151, 

275n,  300,  390,  419,  421. 
Foncin,  367, 
Fontenelle,  23,  126,  239. 
Food,  39. 

Foussagrives,  39,  87,  102. 
Forms,  geometrical,  419. 


Gauthey,  143,  146,  153,  196,  201, 
221,  242. 

Generalization,  169,  174,  176,  481. 

Geography,  362,  445;  progress  in 
studies,  362 :  new  methods,  363 ; 
definitions,  364 ;  utility  of,  365 ; 
divisions,  366  ;  begin  early,  368  ; 
methods,  369 ;  national,  370 ; 
correct  methods  in,  371 ;  maps, 
373 ;  globe,  376 ;  text-books,  376 ; 
physical,  in  the  education  of  the 
reason,  179. 

Geometry,  419,  440 ;  in  common 
schools,  389 ;  purpose  and  meth- 
od of,  390;  elementary  course, 
391 ;  intuitive,  392  ;  tachyinetry, 
392. 

George,  Dr.,  36. 

German  schools,  165 ;  methods  in, 
294,  296,  350. 

Gill,  273n. 


Girard,  Pere,  151,  187,  328,  365. 

Girardin,  31. 

Globe,  in  geography,  376. 

Goldsmith,  38. 

Good,  love  of  the,  225. 

Grammar,  327-9,  445 ;  necessity  of, 
330;  true  method,  331;  text- 
books, 332 ;  qualities  of  a  good 
text-book,  333 ;  historical,  333. 

Grant,  Horace,  102. 

Greard,  Pere,  46n,  64,  79, 90, 92, 291, 
331,  337,  339,  340,  342,  346,  350, 
359,  369,  410,  434,  442,  444,  462, 
468-70,  475. 

Greeks,  the,  29,  249,  254 ;  their  lan- 
guage, 334 ;  their  education,  429, 
450. 

Guizot,  M.,  24,  61,  114,  186,  295, 
471. 

Guizot,  Mme.,  71,  192, 207,  209,  212. 

Guillaume,  M.  E.,  294,  298n,  425. 

Gymnastics,  36, 40,  234n,  433 ;  mili- 
tary, 43 ;  for  girls,  44 ;  pro- 
grammes for,  46 ;  play  and,  47. 

Habit,  227  ;  habits,  236. 

Hall,  294. 

Hardouin,  Pere,  126n. 

Hamilton,  Sir  Wm.,  478. 

Hearing,  education  of  the,  81. 

Hegel,  186. 

Helvetius,  23. 

Herder,  254,  328,  368. 

History,  445 ;  education  of  the 
reason  by,  179 ;  exciting  patriot- 
ism, 194,  343 ;  in  moral  educa- 
tion, 221 ;  in  common  schools, 
343;  purpsse  of,  343;  influence 
on  the  development  of  the  mind, 
344;  character  and  limits  of  in- 


INDEX. 


487 


struction,  345 ;  fundamental  no- 
tions, 346 ;  two  systems,  347 ;  old 
system,  school  programme,  348 ; 
regressive  method,  350  ;  general 
method,  ordinary  faults,  351 ; 
suggestions,  352 ;  intuition  in, 
353 ;  lesson  on  the  feudal  system, 
355;  text-books,  357;  summaries, 
and  narratives,  358 ;  incidental 
aids,  359 ;  civic  instruction,  360, 
411 ;  and  geography,  360. 

Horner,  282,  297-8,  338-9,  384. 

Humanities,  the,  15. 

Hume,  154. 

Huxley,  15. 

Hygiene,  school,  36 ;  of  the  senses, 
76 ;  myopia,  87. 

Ideas,  general  and  abstract,  170, 
173;  general  before  language, 
171 ;  relation  of  emotions  to, 
194 ;  difference  between  will 
and,  229. 

Imagination,  education  of  the,  138. 

"  Imitation  of  Jesus  Christ,"  220. 

Induction,  180,  276;  essential 
points  and  examples,  183. 

Inequalities,  intellectual,  70. 

Instruction,  methods  of,  56 ;  pleas- 
ure in,  67. 

Intellectual  education,  52. 

Intelligence,  beginning  of,  73. 

Intuition,  283 ;  in  history,  353 ;  in- 
tuitions, 174-6. 


Jacotot,  70, 120,  124,  276n,  297,  299, 

361. 

Jacoulet,  81. 
Janet,  Paul,  95, 139,  170,  269,  397, 

399,  401,  403,  408. 


Jansenists,  the,  208. 

Javal,  Dr.,  43n. 

Jesuits,  the,  16,  68. 

Johnson,  Dr.,  132. 

Johonnot,  James,  55,  129,  313-4, 

318. 

Joly,  11,  68. 
Jouffroy,  191. 
Jowett,  19n. 
Judgment,  the,  126,  159;    culture 

of  the,  161 ;  in  the  child,  162. 

Kant,  10, 11, 18,  20,  62,  67,  111,  127, 
140,  147,  200, 208-9,  213-4,  232-3, 
236,  243,  260. 

Kindergarten,  the,  300. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  36. 

Knowledge,  and  will,  227. 

Kohn,  M.,  87. 

Laboulaye,  168. 
La  Bruyere,  209,  452. 
Lacoinbe,  107. 
Laisnd,  44,  46n,  48. 
La  Fontaine,  122-3n,  146,  209,  257. 
Lakanal,  292. 

Language,  the  study  of,  326;  les- 
sons, 328. 

La  Rochefoucauld,  242. 
Larominguiere,  98. 
Latin,  the  study  of,  41,  334n. 
Laurie,  S.  S.,  288,  386. 
Lavisse,  346,  356. 
Legouve',  83,  118, 136,  210. 
Leibnitz,  25,  95n,  117. 
Levasseur,  370,  372. 
Leyssenne,  390-1. 
Lhomond,  330,  361. 
Liberty,  231 ;  education  in,  233. 
Life,  importance  of  the  will  in,  244. 


488 


INDEX. 


Lincoln,  D.  F.,  36. 

Literature,  teaching,  341. 

Littre,  281,  366. 

Locke,  9,  28,  31,  37,  39,  52,  70,  76, 

107,  112,  119-20,  178,  180,  224, 

293,  421,  434,  450,  459. 
Luther,  149. 
Luys,  120. 

Maclaren,  A.,  36. 

Malebranche,  139. 

Mann,  Horace,  14,  25,  26. 

Manual  labor,  in  common  schools, 
433 ;  importance  of,  433 ;  indus- 
tries in  schools  for  boys,  435 ; 
who  should  give  lessons,  436 ; 
order  of  lessons,  437;  agricul- 
ture, 438;  military  drill,  439; 
industries  in  schools  for  girls, 
440 ;  needle-work,  441 ;  abuses 
of,  442  ;  domestic  economy,  443. 

Maps,  in  general,  373 ;  in  atlas, 
373 ;  wall,  374 ;  relief,  374. 

Marcel,  338. 

Marcellus,  353. 

Marche-Girard,  Mile.,  127. 

Marcus  Aurelius,  223. 

Marion,  5,  11,  23,  31,  51, 122n,  191, 
199,  202,  237,  246,  250,  258,  269, 
402. 

Martha,  M.,  257. 

Mathematics,  180,  380. 

Military  drill,  439. 

Mill,  James,  12. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  10,  234,  252. 

Mind,  instruction  and  education 
of,  54  ;  not  a  vase,  but  a  fire,  63 ; 
inner  development  of,  68. 

Memory,  the  doctrine  of,  133,  477  ; 
education  of  the,  114;  function 


in  geography,  372 ;  in  arithmetic, 
387. 

Mental  arithmetic,  385. 

Methodology,  267. 

Methods,  56,  69,  265-6,  272. 

Metric  system,  382,  388. 

Mineralogy,  394. 

Mnemonics,  134. 

Mobiles,  191. 

Moliere,  178. 

Montaigne,  3,  29,  72,  118, 120, 127, 
129,  133, 161,  186,  238,  299,  313. 

Morality,  216. 

Morals,  consequence  of  defective 
attention  in,  113 ;  and  educa- 
tion, 185,  203,  260 ;  teaching,  397; 
topics,  399;  scope  and  limits, 
399;  courses,  400;  methods,  401 ; 
characteristics  of  instruction, 
401 ;  teaching  through  the  heart, 
402;  through  reflection,  403"; 
through  practice,  403 ;  exercises, 
404 ;  example  of  the  teacher, 
405 ;  incidental  marks,  406 ; 
reading,  407 ;  poetry,  407 ;  theo- 
retical, 408  ;  lay  rights,  413 ;  in- 
fluence of  music,  428  ;  influence 
of  family  on,  469. 

Mother-tongue,  study  of  the,  325. 

Motives,  191. 

Movement,  need  of,  104. 

Mozart,  121. 

Museums,  school,  313. 

Music,  moral  influence  of,  429 , 
and  discipline,  430;  theory  of, 
432. 

Myopia,  in  children,  87. 

Namur,  283. 

Napoleon  I.,  206,  429. 

Narratives,  149. 


INDEX. 


489 


Nature,  principles  of,  16 ;  -what  are 
we  to  understand  by  ?  17  ;  re- 
strictions, 18. 

Newton,  97,  178. 

Nicole,  62,  68,  71,  97,  178,  330,  368. 

Niemeyer,  11. 

Non  mutta,  sed  multum,  64. 

Novelty,  effects  upon  attention, 
108. 

Numeral  frames,  384. 

Observation,  89  ;  in  the  child,  90. 

Object-lessons,  175,  285,  310 ;  rules 
for,  317;  method  of,  324;  in 
arithmetic  and  geometry,  393; 
in  science,  394. 

Oral  exercises,  445. 

Orthography,  328, 335.  See  "  Spell- 
ing." 

Page,  David  P.,  304. 

Pain,  199 ;  in  education,  68. 

Pape-Carpantier,  Mme.,  38,  46,  65, 
87,  89,  93,  140,  196n,  302,  311, 
313,  319,  324,  338,  354,  442. 

Parents,  co-operation  with  teach- 
ers, 468. 

Pascal,  30,  114,  123,  139,  253,  446, 
452. 

Passions,  the,  201. 

Payne,  W.  H.,  notes  by,  5,  8, 17-8, 
41,  52-3,  66,  191,  298,  326-7,  336, 
392 ;  the  doctrine  of  memory, 
477 ;  analysis  and  synthesis, 
478;  the  problem  of  primary 
reading,  479 ;  value  of  subjects, 
480. 

IMcaut,  Dr.,  36,  46n,  151,  406. 

Pedagogics,  5. 

Pedagogy,  its  scientific  principles, 


7  ;  relation  to  psychology,  7 ;  to 

other  sciences,  9 ;  practical,  265. 
Perception,  89. 

Perceptions,  14  ;  acquired,  77. 
Pe'rez,  Bernard,  80,  86,  99,  171,  189, 

214,  217,  248. 
Pestalozzi,  8,  20,  78, 141,  153,  218n, 

219,  268,  275n,  285,  306,  310,  321, 

363,  410,  419,  431,  459,  463. 
Peter  the  Great,  38. 
Phillip,  Frere,  162. 
Physical  education,  28;    in  Eng- 
land, 49. 
Physics,  394. 

Physiology,  of  the  child,  33. 
Pictures,  144. 
Pillans,  Professor,  67. 
Plato,  10,  19n,  23,  30,  45,  60,  249, 

429. 

Platrier,  312. 
Play,  152 ;    and  gymnastics,  47 ; 

necessity  of,  48 ;  imagination  in, 

152. 

Pleasure,  199 ;  in  instruction,  67. 
Plutarch,  223,  225. 
Poetry,  150 ;  in  moral  instruction, 

407. 

Politics,  and  civic  instruction,  412. 
Pompe'e,  218n. 
Port  Royal,  265,  295 ;   logic,  124, 

161. 

Practical,  aim  of  education  the,  71. 
Practice,  education  through,  403. 
Precepts,  in  moral  education,  244. 
Prizes,  455. 

Problems,  in  arithmetic,  386. 
Psychology,  relation  of  pedagogy 

to,  7 ;    is  there  an    infant  I  •  8 ; 

methods  based  on,  67. 
Punishments,    456 ;     reprimands, 


490 


INDFA'. 


456 ;  actual,  457  ;  threats,  457  ; 
tasks  or  impositions,  458  ;  cor- 
poral, 459 ;  general  rules,  459. 

Quintilian,  143n. 

Rabelais,  132,  450. 

Rambert,  384. 

Ravaisson,  M.,  253,  255,  424. 

Reading,  290,  445 ;  teaching,  292 ; 
alphabetic  method,  294 ;  pho- 
netic, 296;  analytic  and  syn- 
thetic, 297  ;  taught  with  writing, 
298 ;  accessory  processes,  302  ; 
expressive,  304 ;  in  moral  in- 
struction, 407 ;  primary,  479  ; 
word  method,  480. 

Reasoning,  159, 177 ;  education  in, 
179 ;  exercises  in,  181. 

Reclus,  Elise'e,  371. 

Recitation,  selections  for,  131. 

Reflection,  the  faculties  of,  59 ;  ed- 
ucation through,  403. 

Religious  education,  245 ;  senti- 
ment, 258;  in  common  schools, 
259  ;  morals  and,  260. 

Rendu,  E.,  123n,  131,  255,  303n, 
306-7,  386,  454,  463-4,  473. 

Rewards,  447 ;  kinds  of,  454 ;  praise 
and  commendation,  454;  other, 
455. 

Riant,  36. 

Ribot,  23, 120. 

Richter,  474. 

Rigault,  254n. 

Rollin,  121-3,  450,  468. 

Romans,  the,  172. 

Romances,  151. 

Rousseau,  6,  12,  16,  18,  31,  36,  68, 
61,  66,  67,  74n,  75,  78,  79,  80, 116, 


139, 146, 150,  160,  164,  180,  186-7, 
192-3,  207-8,  210,  219,  233,  236, 
246,  260,  293,  310,  363,  418,  434, 
450. 

Rousselot,  154n,  242,  265n,  304. 

Rules,  pedagogical,  175;  for  the 
education  of  the  feelings,  193. 

Saffray,  Dr.,  82. 

St.  Augustine,  208,  416. 

St.  Paul,  208. 

Schrader,  367. 

Science,  education  of  the  reason 
by,  179;  of  education,  is  there 
a?  4. 

Sciences,  in  common  schools,  379, 
393;  programmes  and  methods, 
394  ;  practical  character,  395  ; 
scientific  excursions,  395 ;  text- 
books, 395. 

Sensations,  75. 

Sense-intuitions,  70. 

Sense-perception,  abuse  of,  322. 

Senses,  education  of  the,  73;  at- 
tention through  the,  103. 

Sewing,  domestic,  441. 

Sight,  education  of  the,  83. 

Simon,  Jules,  11. 

Singing,  in  the  common  schools, 
427  ;  in  maternal  schools ;  moral 
influence  of,  428 ;  and  discipline, 
430 ;  choice  of  pieces,  430  ;  meth- 
ods and  processes,  431 ;  intuition 
in,  431 ;  theory  of,  432. 

Sisyphus,  96. 

Smell,  education  of  the,  79. 

Socrates,  19n,  53. 

Souvestre,  27. 

Spelling,  the  old  and  the  new,  295. 
See  "  Orthography." 


INDEX. 


491 


Spencer,  H.,  10,  29,  34,  37-40,  44, 
47-8,  63,  58,  65-7,  91,  128,  312, 
316, 328, 346, 387,  391,  404,  422-3, 
460-2. 

Stein,  11. 

Studies,  66 ;  value  of  subjects,  480. 

Sully,  13n,  109,  148,  168,  191,  201, 
230. 

Supervision,  necessity  of  vigorous, 
466. 

Swiss  methods,  273,  281,  298,  338. 

Syllogism,  the,  181. 

Synthesis,  280,  478. 

Tachymetry,  392. 

Taine,  H.,  49,  163,  172. 

Tales,  148. 

Talleyrand,  267. 

Taste,  culture  of  the,  79,  265. 

Teacher,  example  of  the,  405 ;  co- 
operation with  parents,  468 ; 
qualities  of  a  good,  471 ;  moral 
authority  of  the,  473. 

Teaching,  abuse  of  abstraction  in, 
173 ;  morals,  204. 

Text-books,  in  grammar,  332 ;  in 
science,  395. 

Tiedemann,  147. 

Time,  distribution  of,  463 ;  general 
principles  for,  464. 


Tissot,  Dr.,  46n. 
Truth,  245. 


Vaiet,  208. 

Variety,  effects  of,  108. 

Vauvenargues,  127. 

Vergnes,  Capt.,  40. 

Verne,  Jules,  151. 

Vernet,  H.,  121. 

Vessiot,  206,  217,  219. 

Villemain,  120. 

Vincent,  M.,  442. 

Vinet,  237. 

Vitae,  non  scholce,  discitur,  71. 

Vitet,  410. 

Voice,  the  teacher's,  330. 

Volney,  38. 

Voltaire,  346. 

Von  Sydow,  374. 

White,  E.  E.,  9n. 

Wickersham,  J.  P.,  69,  312,  316 

322,  364. 

Words,  without  things,  321. 
Writing,  290  ;  taught  with  reading; 

298 ;  teaching,  306 

Zoology,  394. 


EDUCATION. 


Monographs  on  Education. 

MANY  contributions  to  the  theory  or  the  practice  of  teaching  are 
yearly  lost  to  the  profession,  because  they  are  embodied  in  arti- 
cles which  are  too  long,  or  too  profound,  or  too  limited  as  to  number 
of  interested  readers,  for  popular  magazine  articles,  and  yet  not  suffi- 
cient in  volume  for  books.  We  propose  to  publish  from  time  to  time, 
under  the  title  of  Monographs  on  Education,  just  such  essays,  prepared 
by  specialists,  choice  in  matter,  practical  in  treatment,  and  of  unques- 
tionable value  to  teachers.  Our  plan  is  to  furnish  the  monographs  in 
paper  covers,  and  at  low  prices.  We  shall  continue  the  series  as  long 
as  teachers  boy  freely  enough  to  allow  the  publishers  to  recover  merely 
the  money  invested. 

For  the  plan  of  publication,  and  for  the  series  so  far  as  issued,  we 
have  many  good  "words,  such  as  the  following:  — 


Science,  New  York  :  Every  teacher 
should  welcome  such  contributions  to 
pedagogics  when  presented  in  so  at- 
tractive a  form. 

School  Education :  Heath  &  Co. 
are  doing  the  profession  a  service  in  pub- 
lishing these  monographs.  (Jan.,  1887.) 

Ann  Arbor  Chronicle :  They  are 
the  best  things  of  the  kind  in  the  country, 
and  are  worth  the  careful  attention  of  all 
our  students  of  pedagogy.  (Dec.  18, 1886.) 

N.  B.  Journal:  A  series  that  will  be 
gladly  welcomed  by  teachers.  This  is  a 
capital  plan,  worthy  of  hearty  encourage- 
ment. (Feb.  24,  1887.) 

University  Quarterly :  These  are 
valuable  contributions  to  the  theory  and 
practice  of  teaching.  (April,  1887.) 

8.  W.  Journal  of  Education : 
A  valuable  series,  and  teachers  would  do 
well  to  subscribe  for  them.  (Dec.,  1886.) 

The  Hartford  Post :  These  mono- 
Vaphs  are  of  the  utmost  importance, 


and    mark    an    epoch    in    educational 
matters.  (Nov.  22,  1886.) 

Educational  Gazette,  Rochester, 
N.  Y. :  All  admirable  little  works  on  their 
respective  subjects.  (January,  1887.) 

Wisconsin  Journal  of  Educa- 
tion :  The  series  deserves  the  patron- 
age of  teachers.  (November,  1886.) 

The  Critic,  N.Y.:  This  series  has 
already  shown  that  it  has  a  place. 

Buffalo  Express :  They  are  exceed- 
ingly interesting  and  suggestive.  Every 
teacher  of  these  times  ought  to  freshen 
up  his  thoughts  by  the  perusal  of  such 
essays  as  these ;  and  their  value  will  be 
found  to  lie  not  only  in  the  suggestions 
they  make,  and  the  errors  they  point 
out,  but  in  the  stimulus  they  impart  to  a 
teacher's  own  powers  of  investigation 
and  invention.  (March  13,  1887.) 

E.  8.  Cox,  Supt.  of  Schools,  Ports- 
mouth, Ohio :  I  cannot  commend  too 
highly  your  Monographs  on  Education. 
(Jan.  13.  1887.) 


NEW  BOOKS  ON  EDUCATION. 

I  do  not  think  that  you  have  ever  printed  a  book  on  education  that  is  not  worthy  to  go  on  an) 
"Teacher's  Reading  List,"  and  the  best  list.— DR.  WILLIAM  T.  HARRIS. 

CompayrV  s  History  of  Pedagogy. 

Translated  by  Professor  W.  H.  PAYNE,  University  of  Michigan.      Price  by  mail  $1.75. 
The  best  and  most  comprehensive  history  of  education  in  English.  —  Dr.  G.  S.  HALL. 

Compayre '  s  Lectures  on  Teaching. 

Just  Issued.     Translated  by  Professor  W.  H.  PAYNE.     Price  by  mail,  $1.60. 
The  best  book  in  existence  on  the  theory  and  practice  of  education.  —  Supt.  MACALISTKR, 
Philadelphia. 

De  Garmo's  Essentials  of  Method. 

A  practical  exposition  of  methods  with  illustrative  outlines  of  common  school  studies. 

Gill's  Systems  of  Education. 

An  account  cf  the  systems  advocated  by  eminent  educationists.     Price  by  mail,  $1.10. 

I  can  say  truly  that  I  think  it  eminently  worthy  of  a  place  on  the  Chautauqua  Reading 
List,  because  it  treats  ably  of  the  Lancaster  and  Bell  movement  in  Education — a  very  im- 
portant phase.  —  Dr.  WILLIAM  T.  HARRIS. 

Radestoctis  Habit  in  Education. 

With  an  Introduction  by  Dr.  G.  STANLEY  HALL.  Price  by  mail,  65  cents. 
It  will  prove  a  rare  "find"  to   teachers  who  are  seeking  to  ground  themselves  in  the 
philosophy  of  their  art.  —  E.  H.  RUSSELL,  Principal  of  Normal  School,  Worcester.  Mass. 

Rousseau  s  Entile. 

Price  by  mail,  85  cents. 

There  are  fifty  pages  of  "  Emile  "  that  should  be  bov.rj<J  in  velvet  and  gold.  —  VOLTAIRE. 

Perhaps  the  most  influential  book  ever  written  on  the  subject  of  education.—  R.  H.  QUICK. 

Pestalozzis  Leonard  and  Gertrude. 

With  an  Introduction  by  Dr.  G.  STANLEY  HALL.     Price  by  mail  85  cents. 
If  we  except  Rousseau's  "  Emile  "  only,  no  more  important  educational  book  has  appeared 
for  a  century  and  half  than  Pestalozzi'  "  Leonard  and  Gertrude." — The  Nation. 

Rosminis  Method  in  Education. 

Price  by  mail,  $1.75. 

The  best  of  the  Italian  books  on  education. —  Editor  London  Journal  of  Education 

Hair  s  Methods  of  Teaching  History. 

A  symposium  of  eminent  teachers  of  histoiy.     Price  by  mail,  $1.40. 

Its  excellence  and  helpfulness  ought  to  secure  it  many  readers. —  The  Nation. 

Bibliography  of  Pedagogical  Literature. 

Carefully  selected  and  annotated  by  Dr.  G.  STANLEY  HALL.     Price  by  mail,  $1.75. 

Lectures  to  Kinder  gar  tners. 

3y  ELIZABETO  P.  P..ABODY.     Price  by  mail,  $1.10. 

Monographs  on  Education.      (25  cents  each.) 
D.  C.  HEATH  &  CO.,  Publishers, 

BOSTON,  NEW  YORK,  and  CHICAGO. 
£,  E.  SMITH,  General  Western  Agent,       -       -      185  Wabash  Avenue,  CHICAGO. 


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